“Imagine a nightmarish near-future packed with paranoia and fear. Or don’t, because Chris Warner and Rob Kelly have conjured just that in this brooding, electronics-tinged set, packed with intriguing touches. Moody guitars mingle with menacing bass, aggressive industrial synths with pensive piano, while celestial choral textures, tense ambient drones and fractured sound design add to the ongoing sense of unease.”
The Long Road to Dystopia
So Rob Kelly (composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, former director of AIR Lyndhurst and Strongroom Studios) and I have been hanging out, nerding out, eating curries and gazing at the stars for many years, so how is it that we’ve only just round to releasing an album together?
HONESTLY we pitched the idea for a heavily Dystopian-stylised album two weeks before something we might call a Global Pandemic entered the scene. Who knew…?
Chris (left) and Rob (right) - composed and produced the album ‘Dystopian Dreams’
Dystopian Dreams is published by Audio Network, who we would like to thank for their support and guidance through the production process, and leading up to the release. The complete album is available on Spotify and Apple Music and all tracks are cleared for worldwide sync usage - visit www.audionetwork.com for more information.
From the outset we wanted to create, grow, curate and ultimately destruct, the entire sonic world from scratch. Cellos, pianos, rusted autoharps, toy pianos, duduks, darabukas, electronic toys - everything you hear in this journey through broken landscapes has been lovingly recorded, sampled and ruined.
Mike Yorke (far right) - Duduk player on the track ‘City in the Sand’, from semi-modular trio The Utopia Strong with fellow music heads, ex-World Snooker ace Steve Davis and experimental/psychedelic musician Kavus Torabi
Move along - No Presets to Hear Here
There are no ‘user patches’ or ‘presets’ - instead that behemoth of modular synthesis Native Instruments Reaktor was put to work, with all the resulting sound design, ambiences, glitches, arising out of fully home-grown programming and patch creation.
“Chris gave me some amazing toolkits of evolving sound design and very weird rhythms to work with, these made it easy to come up with interesting frame-works for the pieces over which I played bass, ‘cello and percussion and did some additional synth and drum programming. ”
Rob Kelly recording butone percussion, featured on the album Dystopian Dreams
“During lockdown we then sent our arrangements & mixes back and forth, which was a really nice and creative way of co-writing during strange and isolating times.”
The Reaktor User Community
There are no ‘user patches’ or ‘presets’ - instead that behemoth of modular synthesis NI’s Reaktor was put to work, with all the resulting sound design, ambiences, glitches, arising out of fully home-grown programming and patch creation
The Swarm - Random Sound Generator
From Eduard Telik (download here)
“The Reaktor Community is a thoroughly wonderful thing - without it this album wouldn’t exist”
A fabulous and endlessly curious sonic factory. We fed some old field recordings lurking on long forgotten HDDs into its sample engine and then gated the hell out of it! Add Rob’ Wurli for extra retro vibes and some OTO Biscuit for extra tears and you get some hardcore Industrial Decay
Drone-e - Drone & Soundscape Creator
From Twisted Tools (download here)
This thing of broken beauty has been a staple in Chris’ sound design arsenal for a number of years. Dialled in with love and despair across the whole of this album, it is at its best when used to process samples of your own making. Here it is wringing every last drop of remorse from the piano in Dreaming of Dystopia:
Yang - Probabilistic Noise & Twin Sisters
by Colugo (Reaktor Ensemble available here)
& László Bolender (Reaktor Ensemble available here)
Some additional patching was employed to turn this terrifying clocked random noise into something even more angry and ambient - dialling in an epic improvisation from Rob on old kid’s electronic toy.
“We were inspired by electronica from Future Sound of London, scores from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and the sound of Bristol artists like Portishead, Tricky and Massive Attack.”
Cataliz - Granular Synth & Beat Looper
from Blinksonic (get it here)
Where to begin with this monster of a sound mangler. Well, it works great on custom loops and samples, and the Resokord module is a thing of rusted metallic marvels. Here it is in a Recurring Dream being used to corrode metric textures and splinter home grown pads: