“Vektormenschen” – Track by Track

Context

Vektormenschen was compiled from the pool of all Spielsachen tracks. That is from an entirety of 62 videos, the first of which dates back to March 2018. So…

Why isn’t it called “Spielsachen”?

It wasn’t meant to be a “Best of” of this series. Rather, it tries to highlight the best from a certain thematic subset of the series. Which are mostly things happening in the area of synth dub/ambient dub/techno/downtempo.

So I compiled a shortlist from the tracks fitting into that general area, then tried to use tracks from said shortlist to build a musical narration. Of sorts. It was a challenge.

Track by Track

Alexander’s Subbass Theorem

The album starts with a compact creation from January 25th of 2020. Gear-wise, it’s the MC-707, Bass Station II, Mescaline and the NiftyCase, with a Zoom G3 in the MC-707’s effects loop.

Stilistically, I think you could call it ambient dub? There’s a sustained low-frequency drone, pads from Channel, the Bass Station II in its titular role as a bass station, and a lot of MC-707 additions. A downtempo opener that limits a certain amount of groove for a short section around the middle.

War for Talent

An excerpt (especially without the introductory babbling) of the “Almost Modular Orthodox” video from December 21st, 2020. Differently to the track before, everything here happens in the modular domain – there’s no external effect boxes, drum machines or whatever.

The result? Pretty straight techno, as far as I understand.

Kabigon

If you wonder which track is “the least Spielsachen”, then it’s this christmas track from December 25th of 2019, making it also the oldest track on the album.

There’s a Bass Station II as a lead synth, and a MC-707, adding sparse hip-hop-inspired grooves and electric piano. It’s not exactly in a standard western tuning. And there’s cassette noise added for maximum lo-fi credibility.

Kabigon is a Pokémon, (also known as Snorlax or Relaxo). Fits the groove.

Kitty Eyes

Considering this video from September 11th of 2020 was only made to showcase one module – the SnazzyFX Kitty Eyes – before I originally planned to semi-retire it, this track is pretty enjoyable.

Moving back to techno BPMs, this one is pretty much dominated by a super-heavy bass, thus making it more of an uptempo-dub-kind of track. I like this longest track on this album, maybe undeservedly so.

The Future of The Future

Being recorded on Epiphany of 2021, this is the newest track on the album, and the one with the highest amount of (modular) synth power in it. Basically, I installed the modules I got the day before (4ms Ensemble, Twin Waves and Mimeophon), enjoyed the fact that in the TNG setup I could quickly install another drum machine (MPC One), and mostly had the thing play itself, sometimes adding fake electric piano from the DeepMind. The video’s title of “The Kings were one day early” points at the fact that I got those new modules one day before Epiphany. The album track’s title comes from my setup naming logic, where what is now called “The Next Generation” once had a working title of “The Future of The Future”. So there will be more along these lines.

What is this? Somewhat downtempo. Otherwise, I don’t know. It’s pretty dense sonically.

Pilze zum Dessert

Closing off the album, this track from July 10th of 2020 was my attempt of doing a track with the Folktek Mescaline only. Yes, you can see the MPC in the background, but it only adds effects.

Ambient. Noise. That’s what this odd piece of gear is good for.