Sukarno 1964

In my political outlook I am Nationalist
In my social outlook I am Socialist
But I'm not a Communist,
I'm not at all a satellite of any other ISM in the world

(Sukarno 1964)

A piece of shitty electronic music build around a Sukarno interview [(c) Gordon Skene sound collection].
I constructed the boring TR808-sounding drum machine track on a Roland JV-1000 (which has a so-so vintage Roland TR808 soundbank), with the synth bass & VCF ostinatos programmed on Arturia's Modular Moog VST plugin. The sound effects are a mixture of NI's Prophet 5 and filter sweeps played on a real Minimoog Model D. The orchestral sounds are samples of a 1964 Mellotron Mk II.

Not able to find the original recording of the 1963 'Mars Ganefo' (an epitome of Sukarno's anti-Imperialism policies), I had to reconstruct one by listening to an existing recording of the song recorded at the 1966 Ganefo in Phnom Penh - surprisingly available at one of King Norodom Sihanouk's websites.

The recording is closed by a snippet of 'Mari Bersuka Ria' (by Suara Bersama /'Mari bersuka Ria dengan Irama Lenso' - 1965), which includes lyrics written by Sukarno himself:

Indonesia anti-Nekolim (Indonesia is anti Neo-Colonialism/Imperialism)
Para seniman turut berdjuang (All artists join the struggle)

The 'Suara Bersama' album was digitized into mp3 from vinyl (owned by Pangulu Saat) by MILES productions for the film 'GIE' (thanks Mandy Marahimin).

dlumenta: Roland JV-1000 worksation, minimoog model d, vsts: arturia modular moog V, NI prophet 5, snare drums
farah wardani: giggles
recorded on cakewalk sonar producer, 2003/2004.

Organized Crime in America

A pretentious piece of shit against any global military industrial complex....

The basic theme is built around George Bush's infamous 2002 State of the Union address:
"I thank Congress for delivering 40 Billion Dollars to meet the needs of our military...."

juxtaposed against Martin Luther King Jr's famous prophetic warning (1967):

"the major purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government
a nation that continues year after year
to spend more money on military defense
than on programs of social uplift
is approaching spiritual death"

"This is politics, man, politics !" is sampled from Oliver Stone's Platoon.
(though I wished the line was "This is economics, man, economics"....)

The outro contains a short inclusion of Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim's 1961 version of "America" (OST The West Side Story)

The drum track is constructed and looped from individual drum samples (Bill Bruford's snare drum from "Joe Frazier", Peter Erskine's bass drum & toms from Weather Report's "This is This" & "Volcano for Hire", Alejandro Acuna's ride cymbals from Weather Report's "Havona"). This explains the rather erratic audio quality of the drums. A painful time constructing them into 7/4....

The violin parts (Fmaj7-Em7-Asus) were repitched and reconstructed from violin samples available at http://efiddler.com. (accessed May, 2004)

A single note of Miles Davis' muted trumpet sound from " 'Round Midnight" is sampled, repitched and rearranged as a new trumpet solo.

The overall chaos was intended to condense 1950s jazz, 60s psychedelia, 70s prog rock & 80s electronica into a single piece of pretentious shit.



dlumenta: loop construction, synthesis (minimoog model D, VSTs: NI Prophet 5, Hammond B3, Arturia Modular Moog ), piano, el. guitar.
recorded on cakewalk sonar producer, 2004.