Texture on Ataronchronon

Everything related to our favorite Scottish duo.

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Friendly Stranger
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What do you all think the guys did to get that odd texture on this track? It sounds like the song is being sanded down or grated by a cheese grater. It pleases my ears.

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Dayvan Cowboy
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one of my favorite shorter tracks from TCH, still it's between Sherbet Head and constants are changing, so...

but yeah that "sanded" sound is very interesting, if you didn't call it like that, I wouldn't came to this,

amazing track
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Sherbet Head
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It weirdly makes me think of water.
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That "sanded" soft-static sound can be found on most tracks on TCH. Ataronchronon, Sherbet Head, and Tears From the Compound Eye are the most obvious examples, but it's present on almost every track on the album to some degree.
Welcome, my friend. These are my people; now they are your people too.

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Boqurant
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my guess is this is what they get when they run their stuff through that old tube-powered grundig reel-to-reel they mentioned in an interview, cant remember the specific interview. they said something about driving the input just to the point where the "magic eye" tube display is filled out, and it adds "a hundred years of age" to the sound

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Boqurant
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here it is: “We love these low-quality tape machines,” Eoin says. “The great thing with machines such as the Grundig is that it's tragically bad. Whatever you record into it just doesn't come out unscathed. There's a ‘magic eye’ valve display on it, and when you hit the tape deck with the right volume, enough to fill out the magic eye, it's at that exact sweet spot that it is saturating the tape. So if you then sample back the playback, it's got a thousand years' grain on it.” Remix, 2005

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Eagle Minded
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Another technique one of them mentioned in an interview was about running things through a compressor at a certain setting making it sound "powdery". I can't remember the exact interview it was in, though.

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Sherbet Head
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ataronchronon is beyond words. its a track that i feel more than hear. it takes you back to a memory or a feeling from your past that cannot be described in words.

i remember years ago living with an ex girlfriend in a town that was about 2 hours away from my hometown. so i was fairly distanced from my family and friends. i was working an average job at best, and things really weren't working out with the girl i was with. most of my time spent living down there was spent by myself. this was all years ago, i am back near family and friends now and am in a much happier place.

the point is this. when i go back to that town or am passing through it. i immediately begin to feel all that old emotion and memory that i've left there. i'll drive down a certain street and see something that i've forgotten, or ill remember people who i met while living there and just get flooded with memories. but i can feel it. its more than just a memory, its like i can feel it again, like i'm there again.

thats what ataronchronon and certain tracks do to me. its like taking a car ride through an old town in your memory and just taking in all the old feeling and emotions.

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Dayvan Cowboy
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where's the "thumbs up" agree button for posts?

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Sherbet Head
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cheese grater! lol
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Sherbet Head
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there are certain delayed bits in this track that totally remind me of the sound of ice cracking on a lake

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Eagle Minded
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they put a ghost in a blender and recorded it through a microphone made out of a wooden effigy of a monkey. isn't that obvious? :P
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