Out today on bandcamp; available on streaming services come March 1: Life came breaking in | Andrew Tasselmyer
On this release, I was trying hard to not fall into old patterns of music-making. I lean towards tempo-less, loosely structured ambient sound most of the time, but have really been feeling pulled toward a more “intentional” kind of music with a bit more structured thought given to arrangement, rhythm, and texture… the kinds of feelings I spoke about in the “Post Ambient” thread - so I guess this is my first attempt at a “post ambient” album!
In the end, I’m happy with how I pushed myself in new directions here. It’s 9 tracks and 40 minutes in length. My primary tools were the Octatrack and laptop. Most source audio was constructed in Ableton Live with Kontakt instruments, then re-arranged and obliterated in the OT - by far my favorite piece of equipment I own. It was all sent back to Live for mixing, effects and final touches. I have found myself deeply inspired by early 2000s clicks/cuts and glitch noises lately, so there is plenty of bitcrushed artifacts, clicky percussion sounds, and fast panning effects around the stereo field.
The cover photo was a mistake I made with a DSLR camera: I was originally attempting to photograph a blooming flower outside my home, but had to pull out of the shot to catch my dog bolting toward a squirrel - thus resulting in a completely washed out, blurred group of color at the very bottom of the frame that somehow spoke to me in the end. I love the faint traces of visible color.
Thank you to Taylor at 12k for mastering this release, and to my friend Andy Othling for letting me sample one of his guitar loops on track 7. All of the vague titles and text were clips I chose from ridiculous stories generated in Argeïphontes Lyre software.
Thanks for listening and checking it out!
