They told us lies from day one

Feathers, wings, under the sun

But I see gears, I see steel

Tell me, can you feel what's real?

Cameras in the beaks they hide

Flying high, they can't be denied

Silent drones, they watch, they spy

Feathered fakes in the endless sky

Don’t trust the flutter, don’t trust the flight

Mechanical shadows in the dead of night

They’ve seen every move you’ve made

Programmed to deceive, designed to invade

Birds aren’t real, it’s all a lie

Built by the government to watch from the sky

Wings of deception, feathers of steel

What’s flying above us is not what you feel

Birds aren’t real, it’s all a game

Controlled from the shadows, they don’t have names

The truth is hidden, the message concealed

What you see in the sky is never revealed

Satellite wings, cold machine eyes

Wired circuits disguised as skies

They perch on power lines to charge

While feeding data, watching large

Your every word, your every move

Stored in silence, no way to prove

The cage was never meant to hold

They’re tracking all, young and old

reject rhythm. embrace eternity.

and so i closed my eyes

because you told me

took my feet of the ground

because i wanted to

knew the floor was your arms

holding me endlessly tight

gravity pulls and your love kills

and so i hit the bottom

because you were not there

took my eyes off the light

knew the dark was your embrace

shielding me from my own mistakes

gravity pulls and your love kills

i am smashed

i am broken

i am never the same

i'll put myself together

strong better unashamed

you cannot break me

even when i fall

and i will not break

is that the droning thump of spinning disk failure, or is it the concert you didn't go to because of a sense of duty?

Apologies to Mister Fox.

Damen und Herren, ich kann einfach nicht glauben, dass wir nicht öfter darüber sprechen, aber das Gehör von Füchsen ist absolut atemberaubend! Es ist an der Zeit, aufzuwachen und die schiere Faszination dafür zu schätzen, was diese Tiere mit ihren Ohren leisten können.

Ich meine, im Ernst, Füchse haben Ohren, die unsere Ohren in den Schatten stellen. Diese spitzen, glockenförmigen Ohren können Geräusche aufnehmen, von denen die meisten von uns nicht einmal träumen können. Wir sprechen hier von Supergehör, Leute! Sie hören das leiseste Rascheln von Blättern, das leiseste Trippeln eines Tieres, selbst wenn es unter einer Schneedecke vergraben ist. Es ist, als hätten sie eine geheime Hotline zur Welt der Geräusche, von der wir uns nicht einmal vorstellen können.

Aber das ist noch nicht das Beste. Füchse hören nicht nur gut, sie hören INTELLIGENT. Diese Tiere können die genaue Quelle eines Geräusches mit chirurgischer Präzision orten. Sie können ihre Ohren wie Radargeräte drehen und wissen, ob das Geräusch von links, rechts oder von hinten kommt. Es ist, als hätten sie ein eingebautes GPS für Geräusche!

Warum ist das wichtig, fragen Sie? Es geht nicht nur darum, der ultimative Lauscher von Waldgeheimnissen zu sein, obwohl das schon beeindruckend genug ist. Nein, es geht um ÜBERLEBEN. Füchse sind auf ihr unglaubliches Gehör angewiesen, um nach Nahrung zu jagen. Sie können das leiseste Piepen einer Maus hören, selbst wenn sie unter der Erde versteckt ist, und dann, BÄM! Sie schnappen sich ihre Beute mit unübertroffener Genauigkeit. Das ist Prädator-Exzellenz, meine Freunde!

Aber hier ist das Entscheidende - ihr Gehör hilft ihnen auch dabei, miteinander zu kommunizieren. Sie haben eine ganze Bandbreite von Lautäußerungen, und ihre außergewöhnlichen Ohren sorgen dafür, dass sie jede Nuance hören. Sie sind wie die besten Geheimagenten des Tierreichs, immer auf derselben Wellenlänge, immer informiert.

Also, was können wir hieraus mitnehmen? Wir sollten mehr wie Füchse sein! Wir haben vielleicht nicht Ohren, die so beeindruckend sind, aber wir können ganz sicher aufmerksamer sein, die Welt um uns herum beachten und die Feinheiten schätzen, die das Leben uns bietet.

Zusammenfassend: Lassen Sie uns begeistert sein von den Füchsen und ihren atemberaubenden Hörvermögen. Lassen Sie uns aufgeregt sein über ihr Supergehör, ihre Präzision und ihre Überlebensinstinkte. Es ist an der Zeit, den Geist des Fuchses zu kanalisieren und aufmerksamer, bewusster und stärker im Einklang mit der Welt um uns herum zu sein. Danke, Damen und Herren, dass Sie mir erlauben, meine Begeisterung über das unglaubliche Gehör von Füchsen auszuleben!

exploring the vulnerability of exposing hindsight.

In a room engulfed in shadows deep,

A coven gathered, their secrets to keep.

Mystic symbols adorned the walls,

Candles flickered, as darkness calls.

O serpent of the ancient night,

Unleash your power, grant us sight.

In this ritual, we invoke your name,

Guide us through the abyss, where shadows reign.

An egg, black as obsidian, appeared,

Whispers of the arcane, a chant was seared.

Cracks spread, with an eerie glow,

Revealing a creature, the world would soon know.

O serpent of the ancient night,

Unleash your power, grant us sight.

In this ritual, we invoke your name,

Guide us through the abyss, where shadows reign.

The serpent emerged, its scales aglow,

A dance with darkness, it began to show.

Eyes filled with wisdom, secrets untold,

Devotion offered, allegiance to behold.

O serpent of the ancient night,

Unleash your power, grant us sight.

In this ritual, we invoke your name,

Guide us through the abyss, where shadows reign.

you stared at myself

as i looked in your eyes

will the future become

the past we'll despise

lets work together

to tear this apart

united we fall

united we fall

united we fall

my wasteland supreme

your american dream

what a perfect disguise

when we don't have to hide

and i'll take up your hand

if you'll run with my plan

united we fall

united we fall

united we fall

tried a bunch of new stuff i'm not very familiar with.

no vsts. entirely sample manipulation from the di-why modular pedal hardware synth.

composed with fragments of previous OHC tracks

fast and dirty midi rip based cover.

birb.

recorded a bunch of guitars to try and do something pop-adjacent, had to step away from my daw until a few minutes before deadline. time for jank.

well intentioned wankery gone less than ideal. Started as an attempt to poorly do 'hard rock' with a bass guitar and a six-string. Devolved into soundscape, but didn't have the dynamic flavor to keep things interesting for 6 minutes, so I folded it onto itself down to this just over 3 minute runtime. Was a good exercise in trying to recover from a series of poorly executed ideas. 100% sourced from recordings of two of my guitars with no synths.

only had 15 minutes, heard her using the piano. total jank flex.

poorly composed on a laptop with broken soundcard drivers and old software.

how ironic.

Inspired by the manga Gyo, by Junji Ito.

Arrangement sourced from the first midi that Google produced.

merry christmas, ohc.

daw kept crashing. exported what i could.

an audio palate cleanser. misophonic appetizer. baked to perfection and served with a delightfully lossy variable bitrate compression sauce.

100% sample manipulation. no synths. including audio from a school fight.

What's inside the box? Pain.

high pressure fluid dynamics versus periodic oscillations

behind the mirror

my darkened eyes

your hopeful glimmer

has come to die

simulation

exsanguination

simulation

extermination

the life you once had

empty and cold

the world you wanted

under my control

simulation

exsanguination

simulation

extermination

30 minute compo lets go

started with an idea for a more industrial track. fell apart. did this instead. driving fast, sliding sideways, looking at the stars in a trance. or something.

imagining the sound of driving alone at night along a worn road and your only companion being headlights in your rear view that seem to mirror every turn you take.

a meditation on small sounds becoming inescapable. becoming intoxicated and oxygen deprived at the same time.

features an undulating texture derived from tiny sources, including the highly amplified internal noise of the long tails of quiet synths, and contact microphones on a refrigerator compressor.

the background textures were constructed by creating a sound from an image of the letters of the first theme repeating over and over again. the story was lifted from a cassette tape I found of myself rambling cult like statements for nearly an hour, probably some time around 1995. the soundscape in the background of the vocals would have been created by balancing the feedback of the speakers in the recording space by while processing effects through guitar pedals and the real time audio manipulation abilities of an early sound digitizer attached to our amiga computer.

20 minute scramble submission

the spectrograph of this track resembles abstract dual sunsets over ocean waves

this is not for you.

sitting over the city, away from the fog and haze

entirely built from random selections of instruments, random selection of chord progressions, and arpeggiators set to randomly select intervals within the random chords. Serendipitously, it kind of worked.

for every door that has been slammed shut

i will still try and find a way

for every passaged closed and blocked

i will push on every day

and in the darkness behind these walls

i will tear open a new way

and in the prison of my mind

i will push on every day

30 minute scramble

The middle solo is a autotuned sample I recorded of my college dorm room window back in 2003. I'm so glad to have finally found a use for it.

Your theme is: corpse parties sexy lingerie mummies drugs pills unicorns.

Thanks guys.

this was about that movie with the vampire right? i think there was a rave or something.

alone on the ice and hunted by hungry animals

unbalanced, not final mix. Daw kept crashing. weird.

made in the last 25 minutes of compo.

got on a noise music kick this week.

20 minutes of furiously reusing assets and daw crashes.

given theme was "love smoothie"

stand your ground

when you tear it down

speak your voice

as your flag your hoist

hear the withered cries

that you can't deny

we can take no more

we can take no more

battles rage

our hope made fade

but we will stand

for what we demand

we can take no more

we can take no more

cold and isolated below the glowing sky

taken from Arcana's stream and done what I told him to do, but he wouldnt.

before the sun shines out its rays

of the final light before better days

can i still see the stars 

through the bitter glowing haze

the steely grip shuts us away

to give our children one more day

but those distant lights still call my name

the worlds apart that we erased

ancient knowledge was probably forgotten for a reason

some silliness slapped together with a selection of samples

composed entirely from ai generated sound loops

a strange dream comprised of various bits of artificial intelligence generated audio.

r1d3 t3h l1gh+n1n6

one take vocals were pretty mangled by a misbehaving audio interface. oh well. its a long way down.

forgot to grab my keyboard and headphones. Laptop speakers don't work so well over the sound of dogs and house noise. I have no clue what this actually sounds like.

i was going to just watch starla's twitch stream, but then she asked where my song was, so i had to make one.

started with a gritty industrial song, didn't like it, started something else, and crashed before i saved.

made in 15 minutes from a single take recording of whatever acoustically interesting things i could find around the house.

your hearing is out of focus. it needs to be sharpened. we have tools for that.

attempt no landing there

liked the sound of a patch and went with it. would have liked to have made something more melancholy.

Watched a bunch of Silent Hill analysis videos this week.

ever shifting, yet always the same.

pentecostal skinny puppy

charismatic industrial, if you will.

surreal and divergent

technically a midi rip. ran out of time to do much with it.

speed run composition in honor of games done quick. start to finish, maybe 15 minutes.

waited too late to get inspired for lyrics. it misses them.

Answer the phone. do your job.

being semi inspired by having played a lot of Horizon Zero Dawn lately, it felt like discovering something forgotten behind an old door.

your love is like the cold of the moon

deeply cold and always there

your love is like the dark of the moon

hidden distant but always there

your love is like the stars in the sky

beautiful inspiring and so far away 

your love is like the galaxy

impossibly huge

and it makes me feel small

insignificant in the face of your pull

like a black hole ready to swallow me

string me along as i fall into you

and all of me is torn apart

a million small spheres each with their own version of the world they've inhabited for only the briefest of time. every one of them coloured by their own frailty, shifting and writhing as they loft hopelessly in the currents they are trapped in. a moment of joy, imperfect and suddenly ended.

long forgotten and even less understood

something's not right with these cookies.

bittersweet like the love in a dream

never quite as real

covering faults with decadent thoughts

never quite as true

aromatic in the dark

never quite the same

filling my mind with nostalgic drops

never quite remains

sickly sweet and blinding bright

never quite what you want

an aftertaste hanging in the air

never quite as real it seems

SAFE FOR ALL TO VIEW

sometimes your flaws are your own decision.

fill me up

this space that is empty

nourish my soul

with the food that removes

between us grows further apart

and the grains that sustained 

are the strain in our hearts

my shirt is red, and i'm standing on the engineering deck.

what would it sound like if your entire life was lived within the inner tube of a bicycle? you go round and round and always end up exactly where you started, even as the world moves around you.

composed from various recovered audio sources including a cassette tape for the Cricket Talking Doll.

I got to thinking about an ambient track centered around bubbles and water noise with cold wind blowing, but then it sounded like frogs to me which made me think about frogs in the backyard when we're swimming but that wasn't hottub enough so i thought maybe some beats would spice it up. yep.

a tightly woven thread makes light of the cord between us

holding us to better things as we speak lies and truths ever closer

do not let these threads unravel

bring fast your grip to winding ever tighter

make the way before you certain and firm

save your regrets for another day

for when that last moment arrives

it is the binding of fibers that gives us the greatest strength

entirely composed from samples sourced from my washer and dryer. Turns out you get a nice reverb when you stick your head in it.

technically that means the entire signal chain was dry.

as with acting, even the weakest of ability can be sold if you really commit to it.

Walk without rhythm.

Participation award entry this week.

Inspired by my daughter to do acapella.

i stood still 

solid as a stone

even as i was tossed away

spinning over the void

splashing down over and over

again

and as i sank

i would not be moved

and as i fell

i would not be moved

and as i lay

i would not be moved

i stood still

solid as a stone

even as i was tossed away

Listening to the waves, remembering better days.

trying, and failing even more.

mostly this, but not in this order, because.. chaos. or something.

 

burn burn tear it all down

the smoldering coals of a life left wasted

 

flame flame and make it hot

set the world on fire and throw it away

 

smoke and ash rising in the sky

the putrid air choking

heat and tears burnished on your cheeks

 

turn your back and be consumed by the heat

 

my dog wouldn't quit whining, so i recorded him and used it in the background.

finally recorded something with my akai mpk mini. yep. it's a thing alright.

Merry Christmas everyone. This is an unfinished track from my endlessly delayed Christmas album.

based around a deeply processed field recording of a klaxon recorded by a security camera in the middle of a warehouse fire. 

Struggling to stand up for the first time amidst the weight of the world around you.

i see my reflection

screaming back at me

i see my intentions

breaking through my screen

 

callus frosted wisdom

reaching back inside

entangled moments fracture

steal away my lies

 

Had to cut this one short this week. Still turned out ok.

Stepping a little outside my comfort zone here.

https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/bc.aspx

 

An excerpt from The Beast in the Cave by HP Lovecraft

alone in the sky, never more free, and never more isolated.

I went through four different ideas before finally giving up and losing it all.

Falling asleep in a comfy bed while on hold waiting to find out of my insurance company pays for COVID-19 testing.

I found this track tightly wound up and wedged between some bricks in a wall. It fell apart as I tried to extract it from it's masonry prison. I took the tattered fragments and lovingly reassembled them. Most things don't go back together undamaged.

 

it fills me up but i'm still empty
sweet on my tongue and poison in my head
chew it up to make it go away

choking on the shards always makes me feel ok

does the flavor lie
if it tastes so good
do my thoughts betray
like i said they never would

throw it out and make it stop
unwrap another shiny waste of time
empty the bag and put it over my head

there's never one more chance

Multilayered beatslices, carelessly jammed into an approximation of the four on the floor framework.

Lyrics and vocals: Lyra Lilith

Mixing et al: Children of the Monkey Machine

Improvised Lyrics and Vocals: Lyra Lilith 

Arrangement: Children of the Monkey Machine

 

 

No lyrics text on this one. She made them up on the spot after looking at the pictures for a few seconds and sung them with no pitch or time reference!

Ambience, Kalimba, Vocals: Children of the Monkey Machine

Lyrics, Vocals: Lux Delora

Vocals: Lyra Lillith  

 

Recording live instruments is tricky!

 

The roots of the willow, drowned in mud.

Feathers of a pillow, too many floods.

Trapped inside, continuously growing.

The mud has dried, the wind still blowing.

 

Oh! Locked beneath, no escape, I see the teeth, and the open gapes.

No! Hear me! Hear my screams! It has me. Endless dreams! How much longer can this be?

Calling willow, endless floods. Ill never know, what I owe. The wet dirt drawing bugs.

 

The waters, they washed ashore. Their daughters, screaming out the door.

Claiming houses, claiming land. Their busy spouses, and their empty hand.

Quickly pacing, with the buckets. Endless racing, all their screaming, causing ruckus.  

 

An ultraquick collaboration between Children of the Monkey Machine and his daughter.  

 

Hastily written ambience: CotMM

Words and Vocals: Lux Delora

 

 

I close my eyes, just to think. Its basically just a really long blink. Blinking and closing my eyes, as the colors fade, from the skies.

 

I slowly fall into the blue, and I see the shadows engulfing you. As I cry and scream for help, all they hear is a welp. A welp they deceive as a sound of pain, when really, Im just in vain.

 

I never should have gone into the blue. I see the shadows, around you. I fear what they will do to you, I never should have gone into the blue.

 

Help me! Can they not hear my call? Do they just want to tear me until I fall? They tear me from those safe, warm arms, and now I am so far. I write these letters in bold, and now, I am so, so cold.

Some noise-ambient silliness, thrown together hastily for your enjoyment.

Uses the following samples exclusively, in their entirety:
soldier_laughevil01
soldier_laughevil02
soldier_laughevil03
soldier_medic02
soldier_medic03
soldier_laughlong02
engineer_cheers07
engineer_taunts12
engineer_laughlong01
announcer_you_must_not_fail_this_time
announcer_cart_attacker_finalwarning5
announcer_victory

Hastily thrown together while I'm stuck in a hotel room away from my family.

Turns out I had a few loop libraries on this laptop along with B4 and Absynth...

The floor in here smells like sweat :(