Here’s this shit piece of music I put together this weekend.
Tony Bernardo “DDDDBBB”
Hey you! Do you want to read an uneducated opinion on a throwaway piece of music? Do you want to read a shoddily written article riddled with grammar and spelling* mistakes? Of course you do! Here it is.
So there I was listening the radio as I drove back from the airport (a regional programme, of course!) when I heard this funky little tune. It’s nothing more than a soul loop and some drums, but it had a cool vibe. I thought “hey, Imma get me summa dat sheeeit”. So I did, and here we are.
The record in question (lol) is “Question” buy KH, or Kieran Hebden, were more acquainted. So I got it home, slapped it on the turntable and enjoyed it a little bit. A little bit less than I was expecting to unfortunately.
KH “Question” cover.
You see, every time I listen to it I get a bit of a sinking feeling. A hollow feeling right in the pit of my stomach. A little voice in my head whispers “this isn’t good, mate” and “what’s this fucking shite, mate”. My inner monologue has a heavy Scottish accent, and as such is quite succinct and to the point. There’s just no messing with that cunt.
You see, for as much as I like “Question” by KH, I know it’s not a good record. In actual fact, it’s exactly the type of record I fucking hate. It takes a lovely, interesting loop from an old house track and puts some heavier drums underneath it (see: “Final Credits” by Midland). That’s it. Really, its about ten minute work and is woefully uninspired.
KH didn’t write that cool little bassline, he didn’t write the vocals. He didn’t play those drums or orchestrate anything. He didn’t sing. KH was listening to some records, liked and section from one very much and said “Hey, I’ll put my name on that”. And that’s as far as it went.
Then it was played on the radio and a load of fucking IDIOTS (myself included) ran out and bought it. There was no thought process from the artist or the public. The exchanged when as so:
KH: Here’s this shit piece of music I put together this weekend.
Me: Fuck me, I’ll buy that!
Worse still, there’s a bunch of fucking weasel-fucks trying to flip it on Discogs.com for silly amounts of money. THE RECORD IS STILL IN SHOPS AND IS NOT FROM A LIMITED RUN. And even if it was, it’s fucking bullshit boring house music.
I am annoyed. This is killing my vibe.
So what am I going to do? I don’t know. I’ve depressed myself for the first time in a while here. I am genuinely disappointed that I was duped into buying such a thing when I’d be better off listening to the original sampled records. I mean, fuck, the new drums aren’t even interesting…
Well, in order to stop people paying inordinate amount of money for this below average record, here’s a copy. Listen with disappointment all of you fuckranauts…
All spelling mistakes and grammatical errors are intentional and for the sake of satire. Remember when we could just tell a joke because it was funny? Well now that’s ‘satire’.
I’ve not posted a review for a while – and long may that trend continue. However I was listening to some records tonight, and I remembered how much I liked this old house tune.
I don’t know too much about Mr. Josh Brent, other than he know calls himself Schatrax and releases cool house music.
Listen to these cool old tunes.
Josh Brent “As Long As I’ve Got You”
It’s electronic music with no compression. You heard me, zero compression.
Sitting down for the first leg of a twenty-five hour journey sucks. Mentally it’s difficult for me to know I’m stuck in a smelly flying tube for that length of time. As you can likely tell from previous interactions, I’m not much of a people person. I don’t strike up conversations on flights, nor do I enjoy being shoulder to shoulder with strangers for that length of time (or indeed any length of time).
I choose escapism – I have a phone filled with podcasts and music, and a painfully expensive pair of headphones that allow me to ignore the roar of a jet engine for as long as possible. And wine, plenty of it.
Imagine my fucking delight as I pull out my immaculate, rarely used, never out of the bastard box Bose QC25 to find out that one of the cups is no longer working.
I didn’t panic. I checked that the wiring was ok at both ends. No change. I changed the battery. Nothing. I searched some of my phones settings to make sure I hadn’t ballsed anything up. They were just fucked.
It turns out that there is an inherent manufacturing fault with the first generation of Bose QC2s, which means that sooner or later the right ear cup just dies. You better hope that it does so in the warranty period or Bose put their dirty (German?) cock right in your ass.
My shitty fucking Bose QuietComfort 25. Right ear broken
I’ve shot Bose a succinctly worded email explaining my displeasure at the situation. I’m expecting nothing back, although I will update if they do respond positively. I’d be less upset if I found out before I stepped foot on the plane, or if I hadn’t treated them with fucking kid gloves all the time. Or if they hadn’t cost near £300.
Bollocks.
I’m stationed in a third world country for the next few days, but I did notice a Bose Service Center as I was chauffeured around. I might go in there and cause some white man drama. Sons of bitches.
I’ve churned these things out recently, almost as if I employ not type of quality control what so ever. Really, this was just a test bed for trying to improve my percussion writing skill, which are horribly lacking. It’s not bad, I think I managed to get a bit of groove out of the old Vermona. Quite a cool bassline, I do like that.
“U. Vibe” from U. Vibe by Tony Bernardo. Released: 2017. Track 1 of 1. Genre: House.
This is some mad shit right here. I told you I’d run from those triad chord progressions. I’m so much happier making this sort of thing than continually trying to shoehorn beats into productions all the time – it’s really not my thing it turns out.
Sprawling, decayed, rumbling mess, almost resembling music. This is my shit.
Technical details: Vermona DRM1 MK III, Waldorf MicroWave XT, Yamaha X81Z w/ Stereoping Controller, modded Kawai K4R, Novation SuperBassStation, Ibanez Harmonizer, a load of old guitar pedals, and a home-made reverb which sounds more like a delay. Oh, and an old tube compressor, you know, for the ‘vibe’.
“Explorer” from Explorer by Tony Bernardo. Released: 2017. Track 1 of 1. Genre: Experimental.
I didn’t use the RNC Compressor in this at all, but I did have this cool picture from when I had to repair my own. I tried to make something minimal and repetitive. I need to start running away from these fucking unresolved triad chord progressions. They sound too ‘techno’ but anything else sounds like I’m trying too hard. I dunno man.
Here’s some music I made. All hardware because computers are gay-ass.
“RNC” from RNC by Tony Bernardo. Released: 2017. Track 1 of 1. Genre: Techno.
Here’s some techno I wrote this weekend. I think it’s pretty good. I’ve posted the unmastered as well as a mastered version. It’s interesting I think because the unmastered version retains all of the subsonics, and sounds great on the correct system. The mastered version kills some of these in order to make it a little more friendly on low end systems.
I’m getting better at this FM synthesis.
Untitled Render 11 “Taured”
Fuck it, I’ll post this too