Balfa
Perfecta Analogía
De La
Decadencia
This is my debut album, result of living in Berlin for the last four years. An album that rises from my personal experiences and sonic explorations, from the moment of my arrival in Berlin to finish my studies in Telecommunications until the day I decide to leave the city.
A sound reflection of the pressures that the postmodern society carries, where capitalism and consumerism reapper with a new status, legitimizing an hedonist and narcissist individualism that leads to the personal and moral decadence of a whole generation.
My intention was to create a space for listening and for sound exploration without the limits of the traditional, occidental music. Understanding the music as something else than ordered musical notes coming from instruments. Understanding that everything that can make a sound can be listened and observed.
A meeting point for primitive sounds from recycled objects and chaotic noises from handmade synthesizers and machines built with reused electronic components. Old materials get a second chance as instruments through a ‘trial and error’ process, something that at some point shocked me and left me a mark (and not only for the soldering iron!). These handmade machines are, with no doubt, the backbone of this project.
14 original tracks produced in Berlin while living in five rooms and one studio, always working near to big windows, through which I saw planes constantly flying over grey, rainy clouds; something that really influenced my work.
Self-released in double vinyl and CD. Mastered in Spain by Aleix Jaramillo, from GimenoStudio. Artwork designed by the mexican artist Delilirium Candidum, expressing the concept of the album from her own perspective, showing a futuristic biopunk-aesthetic world where humans are biologically manipulated under the corporation’s profits. And the Portuguese visual artist Maria Mendes, who is showing her view of the album through motion graphics.
01. Corredor Aéreo
Extract from a recording of one of the sessions where I experimented with my handmade machines, creating an abrasive atmosphere that felt as escaping from reality, modulating and exploring the noise out loud for hours, while looking through a 7th floor window.
A landscape full of trees and, most of the time cloudy, rainy, where thousands of planes flied non-stop, one after another, slowly, far away.
As time went by, I explored the sound and I went deeper into its details. Planes kept passing across my window, slowlier and slowlier.
The album starts with this track with the intention of clearing the listener’s ears and mind through sound pressure and noise, breaking any expectations, introducing the subject and main cause of the project, laying down its foundations.
02. Auto – Introducción
ambient twin2 -abdulero_Mezclado con 10. y 31. y ex_4 Self Introduction
Mix of different ideas recorded in 2017, all of them with no percussion, kind of ambient.
It came to my mind to design a ‘hard kick’. I am not used to create these kind of kick-drums since I stopped playing music at 170 bpm.
Until then, I was always working with a more flat and deep punch, without hard medium peaks, but that day it seemed to fit perfectly in this track, and the track totally changed its direction. Now I cannot stop designing this kind of punchy and hitting bass drums.
Just like most of my music, this track contains sonic elements coming from ‘bent’ instruments, specially battery-powered toys, through techniques of circuit bending.
This track is the one that made me think about releasing the album. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but when I finished it, all started to make sense and I decided to release it.
03. Interludio Primero
This track comes up at the time I was working mostly with a handmade set up. I built three devices that work as a unit, depending on each other: clock + patchable sequencer + synthesizer.
I also added an extra synthesizer and the Volca Beats to that set up. Even though it’s not a great rhythm machine, I use its kick-drum a lot, which I consider pretty good considering its price. I think I bought it for 60€ second hand (and just for the bass-drums and the hi-hat it’s worth it!). I still have to make it the mods I saw on internet though.
I don’t really rembember now if the handmade synth sounds in the final version, but I remember modifying the bass drum with the handcrafted devices, that creates a pretty curious distortion and saturation.
At first it was more like a clubbing-oriented track, but I never felt like finishing it in that way. I remade a short version that plays now the role of the first interlude, a space element between the different sides of the album.
04. Presionero
Op+a4_105_intro_016_v1q Mind Is Against You
A digital design of a semi-generative model that generates percussion and rhythm is the cornerstone of this track.
It’s a defined process to develop automatically a random rhythm structure with no repetition, through pre-programmed algorithms’ decisions.
My interest in the conceptualization of time has inspired this track. It has many tempo fluctuations. Microscopic ones, that increase exponentially until becoming drastic alterations that change the rhythm. The track was first exported under the name ‘Devaluación Temporal’.
05. Segunda Introducción
It comes from a mix between the Analog Four automation, based on Parameter Locks and the tracks and filters’ feedbacks to get unexpected results, together with a digital design of a probability tool for an algorithmic music composition, where that tool is able to make choices through mathematical equations and random events. It was also designed with manual adjustable parameters to get certain control margin over the final result.
I normally use snares more than claps, but in this album I used mainly real claps as a metaphor of applauses. A non-verbal communication to show approval and admiration, what became a real need nowadays.
06. Interludio Segundo
Invision
When I moved to Berlin, I spent a lot of time in my room making music with my computer and a small MIDI keyboard, looking through a big window that covered up the entire wall.
Since I arrived, I really wanted to create something really personal. Four years later, after 200 or 250 projects, I got it. But three years ago, in 2016, I also tried to put together a 13-track album, all recorded during my first year and a half in Berlin, very ambient and melodic music. At the end I wasn’t 100% happy with it, so I decided not to release it and keep it for me.
I wanted to include in this album one of the old tracks, so I chose 3 of the 13 and finally opted for this one, Invision, although the original track was quite longer and more dynamic.
Mixed with a recording made some time later, arriving to my studio, walking along a quiet and solitary path.
07. Afloración
Space echo (+montaje) – Cascade worm + 2018. NORULES, CLOUDSPADSEPIC, syro_ v6
Its first name was quite long and funny, and comes up when working with one of the 13 tracks of Invision, my first unreleased album. It’s one of the oldest tracks, but mixed with recent sonic explorations I made later in other projects.
This song is the one that was created with more tracks. It’s full of recordings and hidden information. It was an experimentation with voice modulation.
In its original version, recordings were from a Clint Eastwood movie (although I always thought they were Jack Nicholson’s). One day I was sick with fever laying whole day on the couch, I removed all this recordings and changed them for some I recorded by myself. This same day I finished the track.
All the track is composed with something very primitive and human, in contrast to its electronic predominance. The album can seem at first purely electronic, but it’s mixed with a lot of organic elements that have been ‘genetically’ manipulated.
08. Sobreestímulos
Noise_10
I made this track approximately at the same time that Interludio Primero, based on the same minimal setup, but in Sobreestímulos I used a granular delay for every track. I got all percussion and atmospheres with this method that chops your signal into small grains and then rearranges, shifts, and mangles it, using techniques of granular synthesis in real time.
I persisted in working on the rhythm and drum breaks with this granular delay, cause I got results that I wouldn’t have other way. I took the kick of Volca Beats and used the delay on it, until I got a rhythm I liked. I loved that process and spending time on it, I got many ideas that way.
I remember getting many rhythms I liked for this track. First version was much longer and with a more dynamic rhythm, changing again and again, but finally I opt to leave less rhythm alterations in its last version.
09. Tu Ansiedad Como Receta
Alternative version of ‘Proud Rise’, a track released in 2017 by the German record label Traum Schallplatten. When I sent them my tracks, they were especially interested in this one, but it didn’t fit completely with the label. I tried to change it for it to fit, but I also created a more melodic second version with a dominant arpeggio sequence, in case they didn’t take the first version. But after all, they liked the first one, so I didn’t need to send this one and I kept it in my computer. For this album I remade this version again from a different perspective.
Almost all percussion and rhythm noises are made with an old cassette player that I have since I was a child, recording its own sounds when playing, rewinding, recording, etc., and modulated them to sound as a kind of percussion.
10. Interludio Tercero
Result of my computer going crazy with many programmed LFOs modulating each other to establish the synthesis’ parameters and make a random play of modulated sounds, creating a 16 minutes track with thousands of random noises with no repetition.
It’s the most recent track and my last project made in Germany, although it’s not the last idea I finished. At the beginning, a melody and noise produced by a handmade synth – built inside a VHS cassette – were included in the track, but after all, it was hard to listen to all the sound details from the LFOs.
It’s also the last interlude of the album. Originally the album had no interludes, all of them were included once I finished the album’s first version. But they’re ideas that give sense and connect the whole project.
11. Afiladas Vergüenzas
La Fuyaru_2
This track was born from one of the jam sessions where I took one of my handmade synthesizers and ‘squeezed’ it to create the most disturbing noises, specifically from two sonic explorations with one of the first devices I built, which I call, due to a joke with a friend, «YAFURULA».
These handmade machines and all the devices I built don’t have a flat or a predictable response, but a random one. Each time they act in a different way, producing random noises that I may won’t get the next time, what makes the experience really interesting. I use to work with recycled components I find in old boards and I don’t care about its numerical value, so that increases the randomness.
With this track I wanted to create a calm, peaceful feeling of distance and disconnection from the chaos produced by the noise. This idea was influenced by the anime ‘Ghost In The Shell’, in a scene where there’s a tense and stressful situation, but music makes you kind of disconnect from reality and observe it from a third person perspective.
12. Posmodernismo
1_2019_4 Analisis
One of the most recent tracks I made. It was January, it was cold and rainy and I stopped going to the studio for working. I just took the Analog Four with me and started working at home for some time. I spent hours and hours laying in the sofa with my headphones, exploring that machine. It has thousand possibilities of routing, it’s fucking awesome!
‘Posmodernismo’ is completely created with this synthesizer. It had some alternative versions, all created from an intricate and tricky sound routing.
Influenced by Gilles Lipovetsky’s book ‘The Era of Emptiness’. With this book I started to analyse the idea from which this whole project is born.
I couldn’t include it in the vinyl edition because of the limited space. It’s a long track and I didn’t want to cut it. It has to be listened in this right place, between the second and third track of side D.
13. Como Si De Agua Se Tratase
A.R.02_kick enchufar plug
Developed from a Jack plug’s glitch when connecting it to the sound card.
I always wanted to create something with that noise, but I never liked the result, so this was one of the last tracks I finished.
I was once working on it, playing with different tools trying to get something interesting, and an effect started by chance and I saw, immediately, something that could work. After a while working on it, I got it… really nice basslines plus an electrifying noise traveling around the track.
The name ‘Como Si De Agua Se Tratase’ comes from a small graffiti near to my last house in Berlin.
The reference to water, as well as the rest of natural elements, appears many times during the album. The attribute of escaping, relaxing, concentrating and clearing the mind was a key element in this project.
14. Y Lo Que Queda
2round A.R.03_3 Home Is Here
Sound introspection in one of those nights that I was in the studio absorbed in a chaotic noise.
Influenced by the previous track, by all the water sounds and its relation to noise and its similar effects, at least for me.
Its original name was ‘Home is Here’ because of a big painting I got by chance, with a very interesting story behind it and which I carried with me almost my whole stay in Berlin.
The album ends similar to how it started, but with different connotations. A loop that takes you to the beginning again. A pressure that you can now listen and feel in a different way.
A narcissist paradox.
