Achenar

Nothing gets me more excited than discovering killer music. Today while cruising around on Spotify I randomly ran across what is easily the most exciting and original slab of electronic sonic destruction I have heard in a long time. It's an album called Super Death Explosion Kittens by a guy named Duncan Hemingway, writing under the moniker of Achenar.

Right at 20 minutes in length, Super Death Explosion Kittens doesn't exactly have time to beat around any bushes. It sucks you in, chews you up and spits you out before you can even say the words "HOLY SHIT." I simply cannot recommend this enough.

If you like it, throw the dude some cash on BandCamp or buy a CD. This is one man making the music he wants to make out of pure passion and nothing else. If you can't support that, then get off my lawn.

Fuck. Yes.

Buy Super Death Explosion Kittens on BandCamp

Listen to Super Death Explosion Kittens on Spotify

Buy a physical copy of Super Death Explosion Kittens

Like Achenar on Facebook

Stream it right here and now:

Inter-

After roughly two years, I have finally released my new album Inter-.  During the course of its writing and production I went from freelancing (aka starving to death) in Plainville Kansas, to starting a career in motion graphics and moving to Wichita, Kansas, and then switching jobs and moving again to Kansas City, Missouri. I also parted ways with a significant other, battled severe depression and started taking serious steps to improve my physical/mental health and lifestyle. A lot can happen in two years!

The album is available for your own price (even free if you choose!) over at BandCamp and thesequenceofprime.com. I hope you like it, but if not that's perfectly fine by me :)

bd

Design Like An Artist

I've been invited to give a talk and a workshop at my old stomping grounds, Fort Hays State University. I'll be ranting about design, art, music, life and all sorts of other shit. I have received a few requests to record it. I'll find a way to make that happen. So if you're in the area on November 17th come on by!

Black Metal On Spotify

I am working on putting together the ultimate Black Metal playlist on Spotify. If you have an account you can subscribe to it. If you don't have Spotify, I highly recommend you give it a shot. There is a free version available to test the waters.

I will continuously be building on this playlist. And if you have any recommendations for bands that I should add feel free to send 'em my way!

The Drums of Virion

I love programming drums. For my album Virion I used Ableton Live with a plugin from FXpansion called BFD2. While there is an insane amount of pre-made beats and loops available, I chose not to use them. Every electronic attack was individually punched-in on the timeline by yours truly.

Below are the full drum sequences of every track on Virion. For those unfamiliar with this method of composing music, here is a quick rundown: The overall view is called the Piano Roll. Every row represents a different drum sound. Each box represents a single attack. The darker the color of the box, the louder the volume. The pink handlebars across the bottom adjust the velocity of the corresponding hits above.

Look painful? To many people it is. Perhaps I am an obsessive control freak, but I can easily spend days on end working on a single track. Yes, I am probably crazy.

So here you have it, beat by beat. And if you haven't heard it, Virion is available for free download in its entirety over at thesequenceofprime.com.

Enlightenment

Cenozoic Anoxia

Backlit

Nuclear Winter

Icosahedron

Particulate Matter

Dandelions in Spring

Ecophagy

Extremophile

Compression

Logging Guitar Riffs

This is a screenshot of a folder on my computer that is full of new or unused guitar riffs I have written. A few years ago I got into the habit of using the built in camera on my iMac to record myself playing anything that I think has potential to be developed into a song.

This allows me to not only hear the guitar parts, but also see how they are played. If it is something rather complex or crazy fast I play the riff full speed as well as at a slower pace to make sure that down the road I can pinpoint exactly what I was doing at the time.

The oldest unused riff was recorded Thursday, April 2, 2009. The most recent was recorded last night. Currently there are 251 files in this folder. Though the actual number of riffs in here is higher. This is because sometimes I have a few diddies that work well together, so I alternate back and forth between them while recording. I'm guessing that the number of unique guitar parts here is easily over 300.

Occasionally I will also have a drum beat in mind to go along with whatever I am playing. In this case I usually just beatbox it in the same movie clip.