Pat Carroll

Tag: electronic music

  • Time Vials: Part 3 is coming out this Friday!

     

    Hey everyone, I hope you’re having a nice start to the year.

    On Friday the 16th of January, the third part of the Time Vials series will be released.

    It has three tracks — Purslane, Campion, and Abigail — which reference the book House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds.

    I was reading that book while I was finalising these pieces, and felt that the mood of the book really related to the music, so I ended up naming the tracks after three core characters of the story.

    If you haven’t read the book, definitely give it a go — I highly recommend it. It’s a work of far-future science fiction that looks into the nature of humanity and what could be considered ‘human’ in speculative scenarios involving cloning and the manipulation of the body with technology, in the spirit of transhumanism. It touches on core ideas of post-humanism — how has/does our concept of the ‘human’ change, and what can be considered human after technological additions and changes to the body. (The character of the ‘Spirit of the Air’ was mind-blowing.) But it’s also just a really cool story!

    The third part of Time Vials begins with the track Purslane, which was built using a modular synthesiser running through some guitar pedals. It was recorded as a single take and then further processed in the computer, with a few extra parallel layers added: The original recording was sent out into other pedals, processed in different ways, then brought back into the session and overlaid with the original. I’ve been experimenting with this approach to processing and working with hardware — making multiple layers from a single piece of material, blending them, fading them in and out, and allowing them to morph over time. These techniques come very much from the workflows of Max Cooper and Jon Hopkins I learnt about some years ago, as well as approaches to electroacoustic music composition.

    The second track, Campion, is a little simpler and came out of a jam I was doing one afternoon on the Prophet synth. It’s just a few chords looping and gradually building over time. Nothing too crazy with this one, but I felt it worked well between Purslane and Abigail, and I also used some of the same processing techniques on it.

    Abigail is a slower-paced piece, and it’s one I actually started in between teaching classes at SAE. I set myself up in one of the studios and explored a workflow using Granulator, a granular synthesiser in Ableton Live. I was listening to a bit of A Winged Victory for the Sullen at the time — if you haven’t heard them, definitely give them a listen. Their influence mostly comes through in the atmosphere and chords, but I went for more of a synthesised approach than they typically do. I also started playing around with really high-frequency ‘pings’, which I love hearing in experimental electronic music — particularly in some Japanese work. Those really digital, high-frequency bursts almost act like pinpricks of sound in the upper registers.

    Overall, this EP feels like it sits comfortably as a part three. It brings the energy down slightly (not that the Time Vials series could be considered heaps ‘energetic’) and focuses on sustained sounds rather than plucked elements or strong pulses; everything feels more fluid on this release. In contrast, I focused more on pieces with a clearer sense of rhythm and pulse in part four — not necessarily percussive, but with a clearer and stronger rhythmic grid.

    Part three is out on Friday, and you can pre-save it here. I’m really looking forward to hearing what you think.

    Much love!

    Pat

     

  • Building Alien Structures in The Grid

    Exploring a Single, Evolving Texture

    Last night I had a great time composing in Bitwig’s The Grid. I focused on building a single, really complex texture. The music felt like it was constructing solid, physical forms rather than telling a traditional, multi-part story. The processing gave it a huge amount of energy and tactility.

    Even within that singular focus, there was still growth. I built the piece through an improvised take, recording automation across a range of parameters inside The Grid. It made me think about how a “single sound” can actually evolve: filtering, gain boosts, spatial tweaks, envelope modulation changes, increases in noise, panning voices outward, and playing with stereo space.

    These choices became the “musical narrative.” Large, reverberant spaces made the sound feel huge and slightly washy, building tension, which then resolved as I pulled the reverb back—suddenly placing the sound right in front of the listener.

    Working in The Grid was simply fun. I love this kind of composition—building a complex modular system to generate sound. The Grid remains the most intuitive object-based programming environment I’ve used. It’s not as deep as MaxMSP, but it’s still incredibly powerful. Max might be something I eventually lean into, but for now, I’m loving The Grid.

    There’s a state I slip into while writing this music where I almost lose track of how the system is actually producing its sounds. I sit back and feel like I’ve “lost control” in a good way—as if the system has developed a mind of its own. That sense of collaboration between artist and instrument is something I treasure.

    Processing

    Processing was crucial. After listening to the music of emptyset, I wanted to explore smashing voices together to form a new gestalt sound. Toward the end of The Grid’s signal chain, I combined tonal and noise oscillators before running them through various colouring tools—mainly distortions.

    There was always a tricky line between not enough and too much, but when the voices were driven together, they fused in a way that felt like gluing on overdrive. The noise filling the top end was especially interesting. Outside of The Grid, placing a reverb before an overdrive added a subtle widening and sense of realism—along with a touch of muddiness and clutter. Those “negative” qualities actually helped create and resolve tension.

    Science Fiction, Discovery, and the Unknowable

    What draws me so deeply to this music? It feels linked to the science fiction I’ve been reading—an exploration of the unknowable, the alien, the never-before-encountered. I’ve always gravitated toward novel experiences, and I want the musical equivalent of that.

    The avant-garde often reaches for this territory, but so much of the music I heard studying at the Con lacked any sort of emotional resonance for me. The technique and attitude were definitely cool, and I appreciated the desire to push the envelope, but the music didn’t feel like much to me. It was innovative in the field of compositional process and techniques, but not in the sense of musical emotional conversation. What I want is discovery, wonder, and a slight sense of danger. The music I’ve been working on feels extreme, even a bit violent, but in a way that pushes boundaries of expression, not just compositional process. This approach to music isn’t written to attempt to ‘blow up’ as an artist; it’s about exploring sound in ways that haven’t been explored before, and sharing that experience.

    One of my students said the piece “sounds like I’m in a massive spaceship,” and (obviously) I loved that comparison. There’s no literal narrative being told, no clear meaning meaning, no love story unfolding—it instead attempts to place the listener inside a structure.

    I think of the scene at the end of the film adaptation of Annihilation, when Lena encounters that alien being/structure. She’s bewildered by it; it is unknowable. Is it conscious? Is it even alive? That feeling—of encountering something truly alien and new—is what I want while making the music, and what I hope the listener experiences too.

    That sense of stepping into the unknown is exactly what I’ve always loved about science fiction, research & education, and composition.