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As it turns out, Pod is the final destination of this S.E.T.I. project... when I enquired about some of the processes behind these space/technology probings, Andrew admitted, "I feel that Pod will be my final S.E.T.I. album as I have now 'said'
everything that I wanted to say with the space-ambient type of music."
He added, "Maybe I'm a bit sick now of The Wire and people of their circle tagging me as an X-Files freak, when I've only ever seen about half an episode. I made the music simply for the pleasure of listening to new sounds. I'm not a conceptual artist by any stretch of the imagination."
As far as the original "processes" question... for some of the source materials, Andrew ran photos of nebulae through MetaSynth, a software-based graphical synthesizer.
"Making Pod really did my head in as I spent hours and hours filtering and manipulating sounds and trying to arrange them in an order which I felt was
correct. Yes, the sounds are MetaSynth creations which were processed with
many other bits of software such as Audiosculpt, Soundhack, Peak etc."
The results are indefinable, gritty slabs of otherworldly communications, venturing into strange territories which seem both electronic and organic, but not of this planet.
A brief transmission from Gemini 7 declares "We have a bogie at 10 o'clock high... followed by the even more-brief gargling-robot noise of
Crab Nebula 2. The faint fluttering ruffle of
Kenaiwhi is juxtaposed to the more-actively exploding grit of Sound 22.
Go ahead and let the quietly hovering machinedrone of Mars Rover x D155440 lull you into a defenselessly unwary state... you'll be rudely awakened by the sharp, much louder growl from Crab Nebula 1 (which ties with two other 0:07 fragments for the title of short-runner).
The smooth intergalactic floatation zone of D155440 data mix suddenly becomes stronger and more chaotic, carried by swiftly flowing electronic turbulence. Microscopic granules are investigated in Noise (for 0:24 seconds) before passing into a mechanically churning L.M..
A nebulous ebb-and-flow, Y.L. (8:52) surges in a shifting stew of tonal vaguaries... utterly alien yet a somehow-comforting place to let go, riding the unknowable soundstreams. The fuzzy ripples of Horse stutter like insectoid chatter amid strange thumps. A final stream of sound from the void, X4W slides through on barely audible strands, a cascade of starlight before the alien spacecraft sighting from the Discovery.
As far as Andrew's other less-celestial / more-musical offerings, I must recommend my personal favorite, the drone-and-drum of Ashita (recorded as Lagowski). For a deep house beat, see Europa Reprised EP., overviewed this month. Incidentally, Andrew was the AmbiEntrance's very first interviewee, back in September 1997. Learn more at his own website.
Downloaders alert: Andrew's kindly made many tracks available in both S.E.T.I. and Lagowski flavors.
And fear not, Andrew will be keeping musically active... "I may do some live S.E.T.I. stuff but certainly no more albums. I'll now be concentrating on
Lagowski projects and General Dynamics club music with my friend DJ T23".
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