Simian Mobile Disco - Whorl

150-gram black vinyl 2 LPs plated and pressed at Quality Record Pressings!

A composition based on the tradition of music from Tangerine Dream to Detroit techno

Album CD included

In April 2014, Simian Mobile Disco, the British electronic dance music duo, trekked out to the Southern California desert, taking with them their new live set up — two modular synths, two sequencers, and a mixer. Over a period of three days, they jammed and rehearsed in the desert, culminating in a one-off sold out live show at Pappy & Harriet's, Pioneertown, allowing 900 fans to witness part of the recording process.

Those sessions, taped under the desert sky, became the basis for their brand new album / live project Whorl. Now, after completing mixing and mastering, they are pleased to announce that the final studio album will be released through Anti- Records (Tom Waits, Kate Bush) in September. The first single off the album is "Tangents."

SMD's new live system was born out of a desire to challenge themselves — to remove computers altogether, going back to hardware sequencers, and limiting themselves to a suitcase sized rack of modular synth gear each — which both reduces the sound palette but allows much more hands on, real time manipulation — constraining themselves technically, to free themselves up musically.

Jas Shaw, who partners with James Ford to form the duo, says of the recording process — "The recordings we did in the studio while we were writing and rehearsing the new material for Whorl were simply "live" takes - the system we're using has limited ability to save patterns in the sequencer, but nothing like the flexibility of a computer. Live performance and studio composition are essentially now the same process, rather than the common method of writing a track using the computer, and then working out ways to perform it live. We planned not to slavishly limit ourselves just to this performance — when we came to mixdown the album, we used portions of three sessions — the show itself, an extended jam we did in the desert the day before, and a little of our London studio rehearsal. " Future live performances of Whorl are currently being planned, with a full list of tour dates to come — each show will be a live recreation of that recording process, so each time Whorl will be slightly different.

 

Side 1

Redshift

Dandelion Spheres

Sun Dogs

Side 2

Hypnick Jerk

Deverish

Z Space

Side 3

Nazard

Calyx

Jam Side Up

Side 4

Tangents

Iron Henge

Casiopeia

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