Mission Hypnotic : Urban Paradise

Mission Street, San Francisco, Around Midnight
Sampled Kitchen Utensils
(triggered by random waveform LFO's)

The sounds outside my studio windows overlooking San Francisco's Mission Street have always impressed me as being reminiscent of ocean waves. Notwithstanding the occasional truly obnoxious noises, the continual passing of cars is a rather gentle and soothing sound. This sound formed the basis for Urban Paradise which was recorded using a stereo cassette recorder. There is a crossfaded splice where the 90 minute cassette was turned over and the length was shortened fill a CD but otherwise the original recording was unedited. The dynamic range was compressed and limited and some EQ was used to reduce the noise inherent in cassette recordings, but no effects were used. I then sampled the sounds of pots and pans found in my kitchen—clanging them together, filling them with water and tapping on them with sticks and mallets and so on. These samples were loaded into software samplers—some rather dry, some heavily processed, some played backward, pitch modulated etc.—and triggered with random waveform LFO's and allowed to run for the duration of the field recording.