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This is the second release from the Obscuresounds sampling project. The idea for this is pure and utter madness, mixing as many styles as I could find. The track originally started off italo-disco in style, but I felt that using samples from mainstream artists such as Kraftwerk, or Moroder would detract from the initial goal of finding ‘obscure’ samples (I still have this italo version if anyone’s interested). So going back to the drawing board I decided to have a listen to Cecil Leuter’s “Pop Electronique” which attempted to meld acoustic with electronic sounds in the spirit of ’69.

It was from this that things started to take shape – the insane drum style simply created a wonderful sound to mix with. Wildwood provided the lyrical content, although I was stuck with integrating the tracks organ sound in to mine – initially this caused a few headaches as it clashed notationally with the guitar, so I had to pitch-shift the guitar sample accordingly… which may come across as slightly weird at first, but it felt okay once I placed some slight AMS micro-delay to spread it across the mix.

The Octave CAT took pride and place for the build-up moments at 0:43 and 2:00. The synths filters were just dirty enough to poke through the mix with all the drumming. A favourite trick of mine is placing synths through the Roland RE-501 tape echo – as I increased the LFO control on the pitch for the CAT, I would also increase feedback on the RE-501 before finally hitting the speed control right at the end of the track.

Other synths include the SQ Pro-1, doing high-resonant blips every so often – especially at 1:21, where I placed the sound through an auto-panner which triggers depending on the sound threshold setting.

I did initially include an MS-20 sound similar to that of Air’s style on Moon Safari but felt that it was too distracting at the very start when I’m introducing the track.

Fans of Bauhauses Daniel Ash will note the clapping from Tones on Tail’s famous “Go!” track. This worked specially well in the interlude section with the antiquated drum rolls.

Overall the track mixes over 10 different elements from 1957 to the 1980′s.