neila (alien backwards?)

Oh man, how much I loved to tweak that BlueFilter band-pass (or BPF) cutoff slider on that killer drumloop!
Listen from 03:12 to 04:00

This old tune was created when I decided to try some time-stretch in a drum'n'bass environment dynamically. This means that you can assign at point A or file beginning a tempo, let's say 160 bpm, then choose point B or file end another tempo, like 80 bpm. Thanks to dynamic time-stretch, you can change tempo without changing pitch or, said in another words, glide from one speed to another without pitch or tune interference.

But this wasn't possible in 2003 just inside a sequencer or audio editor -not in a clunky way. This was possible because of a little freeware app called GranuLab which, basically, slices your audio (any .wav or .aif) in zillions of fragments (called grains) and lets you manipulate their repetition, elimination or even applying pitch or volume envelopes (besides reversing them, phase-offset them...)
funny stuff. This app is the one Mr. Norman Cook used in his smash hit The Rockafeller Skank to do that roll-up with the whole track going from slow to fast. Clever! And of course I've found GranuLab after some research about that tune ;)

Therefore, after renderning the resulting parameter manipulation into a large chunk of audio, it is ready to insert into your preferred audio sequencer/multitrack.
Listen from 04:11 to 04:30

Those pads, nice pads they are! Starts the song and you're almost there, the ambiance is defined, the journey begins. Some typical drum'n'bass notes to define the lows, a thin arpeggio to add some nerve and... the drone, the tension. Thanks to a pair of soft-vocoders and some percussive synth-line pattern in 4 bars, plus lots of dark reverb and some alien language spoken-like notes here and there as triggers... here it is. The neila concept.
Helps the fact that one of the soft-vocoders fails from time to time adding that weird sprut, spit, execration, noise, saturation... you name it... gritty and cool aesthetics to it.

All in all, one of the most adventurous and spontaneous trips made through my fingers so far.

Get it, hear it, enjoy it here:
bombjack - neila