Surachai Ritual /12" LP

Surachai Ritual /12" LP

Ritual was composed entirely on the Cwejman S1 MKII.

Minimal Black 180 Gram Vinyl, Deluxe Tip-On Gatefold Jacket. Comes With Logo Card And Waveform Gate Sticker. Artwork By Emilie Elizabeth & John Crawford. Layout By Caspar Newbolt. Limited To 300. 

Pre-Production
After several years of creating complex arrangements and aurally dense albums, I decided to simplify the tools and work with its impact on composition and sound. One of my favorite synthesizers is the semi-modular Cwejman S1 MKII and knew that it was complex enough to shape all the sounds I needed for an album. The Cwejman’s architecture is familiar to existing 3 oscillator systems but its semi-modular nature, filters, envelopes, and even distortion are completely unique. Although using only one sound source simplified the sound I believe Ritual is, frequency wise, the heaviest album I have made.

Recording
The signal chain was short. Cwejman S1 MKII output > Eventide Space > RME Fireface UC. The Cwejman was sequenced by the Make Noise RENE. The Dynaverb algorithm in the Eventide Space was the only reverb model used, except 20 (00) where a Tip Top Audio Z5000 delay preset was utilized. The album was tracked into Logic X and like my previous albums, everything was recorded into one large session but this time only 4 tracks were used.

Sync & Editing
Sync was placed by hand – not quantized on a grid or snapped to a BPM. A drifting master clock might be considered “charming” or give the album “personality” but it presented an unnecessary task of syncing audio files that would eventually sound like a train wreck if not reorganized. Although the drifting was unintended, by the end, I grew fond of this quirk, at points, and let some parts go their own way.

The editing, like the clock source, is pretty rough and raw. You can hear cables being pulled out, patched in, crackling knobs, and ground hum – all things I decided to leave in. There are a couple tracks where the computer was not able to handle the buffer size while recording and it resulted in audio files corrupted with a dynamic static effect. While these static infested files were immediately re-recorded cleanly, I ended up using the static files as it added an accidental texture. The most obvious example of this static is all over 03 (06).

Mixing & Mastering
Unlike past albums, I didn’t dwell on the mix for very long – hell, I didn’t even EQ anything! Because of the unique and versatile filters in the Cwejman S1 MKII, I was able to carve out unwanted frequencies during the recording process and simply had to automate volume changes in post. The bass in the Cwejman is very intense, and even with proper monitoring, I didn’t understand its depth until I went to Richard Devine’s studio that has subs. His system revealed frequencies I didn’t know existed in the recordings until monitoring on his system. I decided to leave all this extra information for Shawn Hatfield to play with.