Eloquencer Sessions Radiokoala

Radiokoala about release:

– Everything was done using Winter Modular Eloquencer. It is my latest acquisition: a Eurorack module that is sequencing all parts on the album (except drums). I used it to program all melodies, basslines, chords, and who knows what else. I bought it in December of last year and immediately recorded a live session with it, original intent being to share it on a modular synth forum Muff Wiggler, as kind of a New Year gift. But then — shortly after, — I recorded another one, and thought I could combine the two (like sides A & B on tape) and make an album. I record a lot of sessions generally, and some I like more than others, but as far as these two, I liked them right away, because they had an element of freshness to them. It happens like this: you buy a new device, and — in case you're lucky! — immediately see it breathing new life into your approach and creation process. I would not normally name an album after a piece of gear, but somehow I felt it was appropriate in this case. Feel free to call it techno fetishism, if you like!

As far as track length goes (26 and 36 minutes), I get it: one may find it odd, but when you take into account the kind of record (modular techno album), it's perfectly apt. For a pair of improvised jams, it is the right duration to keep track of musical texture and its evolvement over time. So there is that. Verse-chorus-verse would not work for this kind of music: 5-minute long tracks would feel stilted, and transitions would not feel as smooth & fluid.

Conceptually it's nothing new: take a record of a krautrock or psychedelic jam band, and there you go; the same half-an-hour-long jams. Or — alternatively, — you can liken it to a pair of DJ-sets or podcasts masked for an album. Well, yes and no. Stuff like podcasts is usually more patchy and fragmentary, whereas here I was trying to approach the tracks more compositionally. I wanted them to have their own narrative, so to speak, have an internal integrity, some sort of suspense & denouement. You can sense the feeling of emergency and escalation from the very first minutes of «Bell Tower Operation», it's like a soundtrack to some action scenes in a film. I think of techno altogether as quite a cinematic genre.

Radiokoala is a Grodno-based electronic musician who's been playing live for more than seven years, having switched on to playing computer-less analogue live sets in January, 2014. His previous album, Whoop-de-do was released in 2015 on American label 2:00AM Tapes and later reviewed in the July issue of the legendary British music-mag, the Wire. In May, 2017, Radiokoala performed at large festival of experimental electronic music Unsound Dislocation X Mental Force Festival.

Radiokoala online:

VK   |   Facebook   |  Soundcloud   |  Bandcamp

Download album in lossless quality at artist's Bandcamp. There you can thank him financially.