Rewire project on Touchin' Bass

Last summer Touchin' Bass record label boss Andrea Parker invited me to write a track for an interesting sounding project that launched at Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2014. A selection of music producers curated by Parker was tasked with writing a track inspired by, or in some way responding to, an image created by an artist associated with the Gamma Proforma urban art label. ​

This is the image I was given, by Mexican artist Kidghe:

(hope it's ok to use the image Kidghe, let me know if not!)

I love getting asked to do project such as these, far more interesting than simply writing a tune for a compilation. My approach to interpreting this image was literal and lateral. To me, this is a collection of related, collapsing and thrusting solid objects in free space. The shapes suggest chaotic movement, competing for space and attention; in form and texture they are akin yet seem to follow no discernible pattern or structure. The track therefore needed to be texturally homogenous, structurally unpredictable, and rhythmically jarring. 

I sourced the sound design for the track (everything - drums, pads, bass sounds etc.) from transcoded raw images taken from the art piece. This is a technique I've used over the years which involves cutting up images in Photoshop, converting them to .raw image files, and converting these into audio. The results are often very noisy and spiky but give some interesting glitches and raw square wave sounds such as the example below:

You can hear clips from all the tracks on this record, which features well known artists such as Luke Vibert, Cristian Vogel, Kero, Andrea Parker as well as my humble self here.

There will be a limited edition 3x12" box set with printed artwork booklet available soon. Meanwhile, tracks can be purchased from Beatport.