Progressive Anarchists
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Posts posted by Progressive Anarchists
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I played around with rosegarden and qtractor but never finalized a song I started with these DAWs. Beside these DAWs, we also have a Bitwig Studio license used under Linux. But when I dropped off the fasttracker and started to use a DAW, it was Logic Audio under Mac OS X. I know how to work with all the factory plugins included into Logic and it is a real science to find alternatives for anything else with a similar handling.
But Ubuntu Linux is still my main operating system for anything else beside music production (Mac OS X) and flashing smartphones (Windows).
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The first thing I do is to create a single pattern with a cacophony almost every instrument I will probably use in the song. This includes drumkits, percussions and various overdubbed melodic loops.
The next step is to clone this "almost all-inclusive" part a few times and to drop different instruments from every copy.
Then, I try out possibilities for transitions.
When I am tired from working on the middle parts, I create an introduction.
When I think it is enough, I create the ending.
When the basic structure is complete, I modify the beats and the notation to make it more eclectic.
Next step is to optimize velocities and the automata.
Last step is to optimize volumes, to apply EQs and using low/highpass filters to wipe out what is not really hearable.
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Technotronic - Pump Up The Jam
(when I was 12)
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After composing electronic music for several years just to release free downloads, we had the idea to release an album on vinyl.
One of our motivation was the reason that very few artists producing psychedelic electronica release on vinyl today and we wanted to do "our small step" to bring psytrance back to vinyl. Because nearly all labels in this genre don't release vinyl since over ten years and if so, only well-known artists like Shpongle or Carbon Based Lifeforms, we made the decision to manage everything ourselves.
But another motivation was also to get experience. While we evaluated the offers of different pressing plants, we intensively optimized six of our previously unmastered songs.
for the mixdown (the part before the pre-mastering) we did the following steps:
1st: Removing all really necessary parts of our songs to get a playtime of not more than 22 minutes per side.
2nd: Applying low- and highpass filters to every single instrument track and moving them to the positions which were just enough to hear no difference because sometimes, not really perceptible frequencies tend to produce clipping if too loud. Beside that, very low and very high frequencies cannot be depicted trivially on vinyl and we thought that it is better to wipe them out on it's source than on the sum track in the later mastering process.
3rd: Optimizing the volumes of each instrument track. For that, we pre-listened each song many times to find out the best compromise to get everything hearable as well as possible. In some cases, we modified the velocity of single tones to avoid degenerated loudness peaks. Furthermore, we played around with EQs.
(pre-)mastering and pressing
After we applied our audio modifications as described and could not find anything we could optimized ourselves, a sound engineer pre-mastered our songs to meet the requirements for a vinyl pressing. Just to understand: In case of a vinyl pressing, the pre-mastering is that what is colloquially called mastering while mastering means to cut the laquer as template for the press tools. Finally we got two masters of each song: One for the vinyl release and one to be used for the digital downloads.
After we evaluated the offers of different pressing plants, we decided to press our record at Flight 13 Duplication in Karlsruhe (Germany) - including the mastercut and the cover printing. And we are very happy with the result because the vinyl record sounds nearly like the digital pre-master.
We decided to produce an edition of 200. More is too much for an unknown artist like us. Less cannot be economic (the production costs per item would be higher than any record store pays for it).
By the way, most pressing plants offer price calculators on their websites. But more important than the price is that the cutter does a good job.
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In Germany, some people use drugs, some people not. People who don't use drugs almost accept that others do. So, drug dealers are almost the friend of a friend of a friend... and so the drug distribution almost happens in a private enviroment over connections of people and less on the streets or behind shop counters.
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We decided to self-release an album in a limited edition on vinyl:
read more on this topic:
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My favourite is track 5.
I like this album because it remembers me a little bit to the earlier releases of System 7.
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Artist: Progressive Anarchists
about the album
The album "West Meets East" contains a selection of six songs in an untypical style of psychedelic music - influenced by various kinds of electronic music as well as progressive rock and post rock. The production of West Meets East has been done using various hardware synthesizers which were sometimes played using MIDI guitars and electronic wind controllers with the goal to play unknown and rare sounds in an uncommon way.
The goal of the Progressive Anarchists is to compose genre-free psychedelic music with a progressive flow and rare sounds. The music may be described as a mixture of "Old School" goa trance, ambient, dub as well as post rock and even classic rock. But it isn't really anything of that - just to imagine.The vinyl release is based on a different master to satisfy the different preferences of different listeners and the characteristics of this media. It is self-released and not on label.
how to get
The digital version of this album is available on the most popular streaming and download platforms like Spotify, Deezer and Napster but the album can also be listened for free on Soundcloud or be downloaded on our website for free. The vinyl release may be ordered at bandcamp. Use the discount code 'psybient' to get 10% off.
about Progressive Anarchists
We are two guys (Paul and Thomas) from central Germany working together in our studio. The production of electronic music is more or less a hobby of us. Progressive Anarchists were originally found in the MID-1990s to release Fasttracker files. During the years, a studio has been created a DAW with different hardware and soft synths replaced the old Fasttracker. After releasing many single tracks just to provide them as free downloads over the years, we decided to release an album with six selected works on vinyl.credits
Artwork: Ursula Zepter
Mastering: Mike Gruszin
weblinks
if you like to support us
Add any of our songs to public playlists, play them at your podcasts, write a feedback.
Progressive Anarchists - West Meets East (2017) [SELF-RELEASED VINYL] (psybient, progressive, postrock)
in albums and ep's
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If anybody likes to get the vinyl release - we offer the album for €10 on Bandcamp during the XMAS holidays. Afterwards, the price will be as usual again to be fair to the record dealers which also offer it.
https://progressive-anarchists.bandcamp.com/album/west-meets-east