Pete McPartlan

rb_1

Solo album out now on Rat Run Records!

I've been doing live stuff with Rat Run for a while, so it's really nice to be releasing something with Rob's DIY tape label. We've made 30 tapes and each has a unique cover that I've hand made using scraperboard - most have tracklistings scratched into them, some have diagrams of the process, notes and scribbles copied from my sketchbook from the time I made them.

Get it on bandcamp here!

rb_4

rb_3

Video for the first track, Relative Brightness:

The video was made by scripting custom firmware on my old canon powershot camera to rotate guides around 360degrees, incrementing them 1 degree per photo. I spent a lot of time walking around London taking photos pointing straight up at the telephone wires.

rb_2

I made the majority of the album during a 2 week residency in the Pyranees with CAMPfr. This album is a collection of process led recordings, which were an extension of the system I used to make Microplastics - basically I was wondering if it would be interesting to offset the layers of the 4-track recordings like this- the tracks are made gradually and incrementally - recording a minute at at time and overlapping them to make continuous motion: 

aaaa
 bbbb
  cccc
   dddd

Then I started replacing the layers: 

aaaa
 bbbb
  cccc
   dddd
    eeee
     bbbb
      cccc
       dddd
        eeee
         ffff
          cccc
           dddd

And each of these groups of 4 tracks were bounced - making them permanent, no stems exist just these blocks. After recording each block they were stacked up into a staircase - on some tracks they retain the original timing - but on others they overlap by more or less. 

>>>>
 >>>>
  >>>>
   >>>>
      >>>>
       >>>>
        >>>>
         >>>>
            >>>>
             >>>>
              >>>>
               >>>>

Making these jagged staircases. So the process of making the tracks involved a lot of keeping track mentally of what notes were playing, where they were coming in and out and then hoping for the best - and I realised this is quite similar to doing straight ahead animation, where each layer is like a frame (a 1 minute long frame) and the composition evolves gradually from this stepped structure - which is only really revealed when the final "frames" are stacked up at the end of the process. But it's not very strict, on some tracks I adapted the patch to play some of the tracks backwards for example and on some I recorded a drone afterwards.

And finally here's av video I made for the last track, Rushing, out of weird stuff I found in the local shop in Aulus Les Bains:

rb_4