THE WEB
“monoton I”
The “monoton” series were created between october 2008 and april 2009. All tracks follow the same principle: They are all basedon a central audio track with sounds from a famous vintage analogsynthesizer – the Korg MS-10. I extracted these sounds from a tapedating back to 1994/95.
THE WEB: “Once on a saturday in late summer 1994 there was one of these flea marketsin my home town Winterthur. I was in the pub when a colleague bustedin, came straight to me and excitedly asked me if I knewwhat a Korg MS-10 is and if I wanted to buy one – if yes I would haveto hurry because he found one at a stand of the flea market, for only300 bucks (Swiss Franks)! Although back then I was only DJing fromtime to time, but was not doing my own music, had no drum machinesand other equipment, I knew this was a golden opportunity I shouldn’tpass up – techno and house music had become popular and the pricesfor old analog synths nobody was interested in a few years ago hadrisen to astronomical levels. So I immediately went out to the standand bought this vintage device. Back home, I explored the sounds ofit in depth, also because I had no other instrument that competed forattention. I experimented with the patch cords and tried everyconnection. “Sick and industrial sounds and lots of dirt iswhat the MS can do at it’s best” (www.sequencer.de) – oh yes,that’s exactly what I like. Everytime I had found a sound that Iliked I recorded a few minutes of it on tape. Since I always wantedto do my own electronic music tracks but back then couldn’t affordthe equipment I decided to give the Korg MS-10 to my friend Sauri,former DJ from Winterthur (DJ Das Sausen) and drummer of the band”men from s.p.e.c.t.r.e” (superb instrumental music! -visit www.men-from-spectre.org).
Thankgod I had recorded this tape – finally, 14 years later I was able touse this stuff for my own electronic music tracks. After I made the Freeze!-seriesand a few inofficial remixes of oldies-but-goldies from the 80ies (REMIXED)I wanted to do something more “raw”, stripped down, classictechno, so this old Korg MS-10 tape was very wellcome. I used thesounds on it as a basis for the tracks (definig theme/mood, suitablebeat and speed), added one or two drummachines, an additional synth-or bassline or a few effects – and that was it. Since the Korg MS-10is monophonic I used the working title “monoton” for thisseries of tracks.
Thetracks on “monoton I” vary from oldschool technohouseacid-like style (monoton5 – doppelstern),wavy rocking breakbeat (waveroller)and even friendly downtempo (cleanup)to raw industrial machine beat (alientank).In monotonX there’sno drummachine, all the drum sounds came from Korg MS-10.
“monotonII” contains alternative versions of several tracks from”monoton I”; the tracks are renamed so that the original aswell as the new version are visible. alientank forexample grew to alientanks in the storm,a three part version with one tank in the beginning and another onereturning to the windy, empty battlefield (middle part) at the end. Apeculiar element in several tracks here is the different tempo of thebeat while keeping the original tempo of the Korg MS-10 sound track,in a ratio 4:3 (pulsatingsource of radio, little jumper, planet easy).In planeteasy sucha change in tempo occurs in the middle of the track, deviding it ina livingslow anda livingfast part.In the spacy quasi-stellarradio source,the effect of slowing down is reached by a 3/4 echo-effect anda differentbeat – the tempo remains the same as in the 4/4-trance-styleoriginal monoton6 – quasar.”
