Ectomorph in Noisey Colombia - Original English Version

Recently Ectomorph was asked by Vice Colombia to dissect their album Stalker, to do a track by track description illuminating each song. Since the article is in Spanish, we're including our original answers in English here.

Read their wonderful intro and Spanish language version here »


 
Beyond the Six Realms
In Buddhism there are six realms that encompass all possible states of existence. Somewhere beyond all those realms, lies this realm where the concept of rebirth does not exist. Only being, all ideas come and go like an ocean, clash and then find their harmonic place. This is the sound of the modular talking through dimensions, with the main compositional tool being the modulation of time, such strange effects happen when the waves slow down and then speed up far beyond our normal comprehension. 
 
Filthy Demands
Out on the street they always have all these filthy demands, we use these sounds to rise above that. This is a quick power exchange where they lose their predatory advantage by the table being totally flipped and we snuff them out on the astral plane. Weird sequencer tricks meet west coast synthesis and the Verbos Harmonic Oscillator really shines with it's powerful bass. This is the sound of the modular as an instrument, all drums and sounds are from the modular here. 
 
Agate
This is a stone where you have to look inside to find it's beauty. This song balances power with grace and really highlights Erika's ability to play her Octopus sequencer, removing and creating holes in the main sequence that result in strange audio effects, using oscillators to frequency modulate each other to create a bizarre sensual sound, you can feel the artifacts as it trails away.
 
Crawl of the Cthulu
Long before our twisted world took shape there was another world that had been subjugated by these ancient creatures, part octopus, and it should be noted that octopi are the only animal with absolutely unique DNA, meaning they may come from space. The world of the Cthulhu is now submerged, forgotten, broken, and it uses it's great mental energy to reach for us from it's sunken home, this is the soundtrack of that mental search. A neverending self-modulating Blofeld patch is the centerpiece.
 
Mysteries (of The)
Kind of the sonic equivalent of glowing from the inside. Musically moving on a tightrope with no net, sounds float in and then move out. The drums come alive and you feel like you are in perpetual kinetic motion, claves snap the melody wisps and flows and then disappears, with an underlaying tone keeping the mystery alive but never fully visible. 
 
Stalker
Somewhere in this vast rusted wasteland, you find out you are not alone. Maybe you wish you were. Ominous thunder comes from above and below and you hear the echo of your bones rattling. There is nowhere to go, no escape. Strings float while the beat intensifies and the bass just gets more and more gnarly, while another bassline rides smoothly under that and tones come in from another dimension. A nod to Tarkovsky of course. 
 
The Alarm
You have triggered the warning. Simultaneously very light and ridiculously heavy, the rhythm pulses and the bass envelops you. When the warning devices finally reach you, where will you go? Perhaps they are simply triggering because we have found the threshold, the gateway to a lost but greater society. Is it still there? Or will there only be ruins? Now we know we are in the right area, we will find a way in. Musically it features a few Moogs floating over each other while the modular creates the drums and the space that surrounds them, and the Moog 500 series delay makes the throb shutter in just the perfect way.
 
Psychic Downfall
When it all becomes too much. We begin floating in a sea of electromagnetic fields. This is the first song written for the reconvened Ectomorph live show that went on to become the source from which this album grew. It is an experiment with a new sequencer controlling a whole modular, with the drums moving around your head, and the effect that creates the speaking tone is the reason we decided to not use any form of sampling, computers or drum machines in the live show, so you could see that everything comes from the modular. Technically its using a pitch shifting delay based on very old technology called the Echophon with it's tonal space selected by the joystick navigation of the Planar, and the Echophon sets its delay time based on the last three taps it receives, and it's being fed by taps that are always a different distance from each other, allowing the echo to expand and contact and sound like it's speaking something like "social work". The main tones come from different Verbos oscillators, the bass is augmented by 2 API 560 EQs which allows the kick to live in it's own world while the bassline growls and dances around the kick. 
 
In Dreams
For the somnambulist, the greatest place is the space between waking and dreaming. This is exactly where this one lives, somewhere between being awake and falling into a deeper state of slumber where the dreams take over. Look around, find your hands, learn to fly, take control of your dreams, we can be anywhere we want to be, we can survive anything with just our mind. You would think you are alone when you are dreaming, but you have actually reconnected to a personalized projection of the universal imagination, tap in and allow it to fill you and guide you to realms never before seen. Parts of the music interlock as it floats between worlds. It is within you, but you must collaborate with the energy to see the full picture. A perfect closer to the experience that began by going beyond the six realms. 

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