This year saw a birth to an album Swimé by Makunouchi Bento which has been declared to be one of the best netlabel releases this year. No argument from me. The sound production is excellent, and there is lots of magic packed inside this 8 track release.

I already played a track from the album in last Remixta Episode #10, but I needed more. So, I contacted the guys from Makunouchi Bento, Felix “Waka X” Petrescu (on the left) and Valentin “Qewza” Toma (right) on twitter, and asked them for an interview. This is what we came up with.

Tell a little about the history of the project, how did it all came to be?

Valentin Toma: It started at the end of 2000, with my IDM remix for an old unreleased Amiga song made by Felix which I had accidentally found. At first labeled as Qewza’s (my solo project) remix for Urban Experience (Felix’s band), it became Makunouchi Bento’s first song as we decided to dive a bit more into the experimental and IDM waters and create our long-term project in early 2001.

There are actually “older” Makunouchi Bento songs, but again, these are Qewza’s and Waka’s previously unreleased work that seemed to fit in the Makunouchi Bento sound.

Makunouchi Bento, who came up with this name and how, what it represents?

Felix Petrescu: A good friend (G-Man) was showing me an interesting article about japanese cousine and the japanese art of Bento. We found it so proper and so comprehensive – that’s how our name was chosen. We use the following text as presentation “The Makunouchi Bento, or traditional japanese lunchbox, is a highly lacquered wooden box divided into quadrants, each of which contains different delicacies. It is also one of the most familiar images of Japan’s domestic environment. Reading the box as both an object and a metaphor, Felix Petrescu (Waka X) and Valentin Toma (Qewza) founded this experimental / electronica project back in 2001.”

The new album, Swimé, what is it all about?

FP: Imagine that you swim in a lake full of sound waves. But there is more to it. The ineffable. That was expressed in the puzzling “é“ added to Swim. Every adventure (and our adventure in sound is no different) has many layers besides the physical obvious one. That’s what we tried to show in this album.

When we were kids and even now from time to time, we were capable of having wonderful and complex imaginary adventures just triggered by a book, a pack of cards, a poster, some small cheap plastic toys or a very pixelated and archaic computer game. We remembered all these adventures and wanted to create one of our own. An album different from the rest, an album that triggers adventures in listener’s head and in ours, every time it’s touched. All ingredients are there, I won’t name them! Just discover them for yourself!

This sort of music paints landscapes and scenes in front of listeners eyes. Are they intentional (you imagine picture, and try to put it into sound) or accidental, you just experiment and improve on the results?

VT: Painting landscapes and scenes is intentional. However, every listener will probably create his own scenario and “see” something different – we like to leave their imagination free to wander through the Makunouchi Bento realm. As for how we do it, well… sometimes, we start by imagining a picture – other times, we just experiment with sounds and melodies, and let these inspire us to build the landscape.

FP: Most of the sounds/music I do is cinematic by it’s nature and what we want to achieve is something like the opposite of the silent movies – movies compressed in a song/soundscape, movies that don’t need visuals to be complete, songs that unfold intricate visual realms in the listener’s mind. I start with a small story/image/mood and I describe it in sounds. Imagine a theatre scene where all sounds are actors and I am the director / screen writer / props man and stage pimp.

How does the creative process happen, in studio or over the internet? Who does what?

VT: We don’t have a proper studio to work together, we prefer the intimacy of our own bedroom “studios”. Then we transfer our bits over the internet. There are a few songs made by only one of us, but usually we work together. Basically we can both do anything, but Felix is maybe better with interesting themes and melodies, while I’m more patient to do all the arrangements and fine tunings – or rhythm and percussion, where there is any. The ancient art of ping-pong.

Which kind of software and hardware do you use?

FP: I use Renoise and Reaper mostly + a ton of free apps and plugins. I also build plugins in Synthedit. (I released a few a long time ago.) Also we earn a lot of plugins/apps by betatesting them / helping the developers (latest example is http://www.densitygs.com).

Speaking of hardware, we don’t use much hardware actually. We both have laptops with modest M-Audio soundcards and we field record with a Zoom H4 & Olympus LS-10.

And I forgot to add some MIDI controllers we use: M-Audio Keystation, M-Audio Trigger Finger and Novation Launchpad.

What is the live setup, how does the magic happen?

VT: When playing our songs, I use a laptop with Ableton Live to play, modify, “destroy” and filter diffrerent audio tracks, while Felix adds percussion, sound effects and synth from his Zoom ST-224 sampler, Nintendo DS and Korg Kaossilator. Now and then, he also adds some weird flute, kazoo or vocal mumblings. If we’re up to experimental improvisational music… well, you can expect anything.

Do you have any other projects. Which are those?

VT: My solo project, Qewza is idle for many years now, and will probably stay that way – I only used this moniker for a few mixes (you might want to check my “Unu Mai” trilogy: 3 releases summing 7 mixes of Romanian music of all genres).

As for Urban Experience, Felix (as Waka X) and his old mate G-Man are still available for (dance-oriented) DJ acts from time to time – however, they’ve stopped producing music almost 10 years ago.

Makunouchi Bento was also part of Jebel Chamber Orchestra – probably a one-release project based on crazy improvised acoustic music together with some friends from USA (John Fisher AKA Ricemutt, Patrick Sheng and Justin Lazarus). Me and Felix might play with dance beats again soon, expect us to show up as Mac Bentley. That’s about it for now.

Renoise! What new features would you like to see in it? How does it work for you so far?

FP: Well, I was in Renoise boat since the Arguru started the early project, helping him with a homepage for the ancestor of Renoise. So I’m really happy with new Renoise. The actual development team is doing wonders and they are coding fast and solid, and the most important aspect for me – they listen to users. There are actually just 2 audio apps that I praise nowdays : Renoise and Reaper. The rest … well … you can judge for yourself.

In the next Renoise builds I really want to see (even) more live / improv oriented features. Actually – Renoise looks quite complete in v2.6 – now that it has LUA scripting and everybody could code it’s own crazy ideas. So the final answer is “waiting for v2.6 to end its beta trials!“.

Any movies, albums, artists or other art which has influenced your music?

VT: We couldn’t name any particular piece of art that influenced our music. Unwittingly, we probably pick up bits of everything that surrounds us, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t sound like anything we’ve ever heard or seen.

Anything else to add?

FP: Yep. “The End” banner. And the BzZzzzZzzt sound.

See also:

http://makunouchibento.bandcamp.com
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makunouchi_Bento/
http://www.facebook.com/makunouchibento
http://www.myspace.com/makunouchibento
http://www.twitter.com/bentomakunouchi
http://twitter.com/waka_x
http://www.youtube.com/bentomakunouchi
http://localrec.ro/?category_name=makunouchi-bento
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=makunouchi%20bento

Show begins with a track by Renoise technical music guru It-Alien who may not be called Eye-Tea Alien, because his name does not come from Impulse Tracker nor Information Technology (nor Internet Things for that matter), but is a pun on word “Italian”.

Next, we play lots of different electronic music introduce couple of amazing albums and talk about the brand new release under Remixta netlabel.

Tracklist

1. It-Alien – A Comet Passing By
2. Amok – Sea Of Tears
3. S-Wrong – Captain Hastings
4. Braintwister – Blockade Runner
5. Hitori Tori – Cold As Fuck
6. Binärpilot – Underground
7. The Hooligan – Viper mk2 Closing the Spacestation
8. Braintwister – Calculus
9. D Fast – Consideration
10. Slippycurb – Chlorine
11. Ashkan Asgary aka ashy!mpala – Lower Back Tattoo
12. Braintwister – Structure
13. Makunouchi Bento – Rain Dragon, Hidden Genius
14. keith303 – From My Halcyon Heart

Braintwister – Identity Matrix

The same day as this show was broadcast, Remixta netlabel released an album by Braintwister. The album contains four tracks of quite original Drum and Bass with lots of sub bass and mathematical rhythms.

I received the material quite long time ago and I was planning for a grandiose release, but I found myself short of time to do all the stuff required, so the release was postponed several months until I finally decided to just release it on bandcamp and let the music do the talking.

Great release nevertheless, and thanks to everyone who helped us to get it on the internet. If you enjoy it, show some love to Braintwister (kasmo) on renoise forums: http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=27228

Hitori Tori – Kinematics

“This collection of songs evokes the disorienting feeling of daily commutes on high speed trains in the Kansai region of Japan. The view out of the cabin window was an endless blur of bobbing telephone wires and slanted trees.”

In 1998 Julian La Brooy’s four track recorder was tragically destroyed. A sound tracker completely changed everything and Hitori Tori was born. Agitated breaks became combined with tweaked arpeggiated synth lines, and a few lugubrious tones were thrown into the background for good measure.

Early releases included tracks as part of the electronic duo Finch on the Sugarmonk Omniscience Complilation in 1999, followed by several electroacoustic tracks out on Luumu recordings. Fasp, another musical incarnation, released an album on the Nishi net-label in 2002. In 2010, Hitori Tori continues with his meticulously detailed productions releasing series of 8 digital singles on Balanced Records.

Having played shows in Japan and Canada, Hitori Tori currently performs and resides in Vancouver.

(Description taken from: http://www.notype.com/drones/cat.e/pan_047/)

Hitori Tori is also one of the well known Renoise artists and is specially notable because of his amazing Renoise live skills using LividIndustry Ohm64. Read more about this and watch a video at Renoise In:Depth.

Makunouchi Bento – Swimé

Probably one of the best Renoise related albums from this year.  One of the most interesting Ambient albums of all time. Filled with atmospheric textures and strange sounds from very wide spectrum of superb acoustics.

Strange melodies mixed with animal voices, sounds of nature and city into psychotic composition with amazingly clear sound image which won’t leave anyones emotions untouched.

Definitely an album worth getting, and you can get it for free on Bandcamp:

http://makunouchibento.bandcamp.com/

Binärpilot – Nordland

Not really a Renoise album, but Binärpilot does use Renoise from time to time, and I just find his music great enough.

Binärpilot comes with a brand new album Nordland. Another 10 tracks of chiptune inspired dance music that just makes your feet move.

“Due to our symbiotic state, the memories of my host have begun seeping through. It comes to me in vivid fragments, saturated with the hopes and ideas of human adolescence. How beautiful it is to aspire, how delicate a process it is to construct an identity through pieces of idolatry and inspiration. Now, these are all memories I am happy to share. Reflections on abandonment, opposition, but most of all joy. Don’t forget to dance.”

The album is available in several different formats, some of them free, go check out the options at http://binaerpilot.no/

Like every time, every song in this show requires a hilight, but other than album tracks I would like to hilight the great track by DDtMM from year 2006, not much to say: there is a good reason why I would play that old track. Also, special mention goes to the ending track by Joulac. Starting off as really cheesy trackerish house track with a little twist that takes you somewhere totally else.

But who wants to read a lots of words, better start listening!

Tracklist

1. Polybius – Appleyard
2. Lackluster – Ism Psm Sm (EP Aeration)
3. Helvetikone – Bender (Album Bubble Hum)
4. Charly Linch – The Fall
5. Next Life – The Reunion (Album The Lost Age)
6. Next Life – World Map (Album The Lost Age)
7. mr mark dollin & Alex Strain – Saint Santa (Album mmd_as)
8. DDtMM – The Breakup
9. Transient – You and Me
10. Juolac – Feel Your Heart Started

Albums of Greatness

mr. Mark Dollin and Alex Strain – mmd_as

After long time of work two musical masterminds have created this amazing release free for everyone to listen. Mixture of complex ambient soundscapes, haunting lyrics and impressive rhythm sections are the keywords that can be used to describe this album, but there surely more than just those things that make this release as good as it is.

Remixta plays a track Saint Santa from the album which is a critical view of the commercialized holiday called christmas. This track was also released earlier as a christmas present for the community.

My favourite beside this track is Phoebe, but as said, this album is full
of greatness and you can hear from every single note that those two australian artists have spent more time working with each individual track than many other artists spend time on entire album.

Transient – Symphony of Curves

Transient brings us a new album filled with amazing collage of samples. A downtempo/triphop release which in it’s whole goodness is availabe as a free download for everyone.

Crisp master, positive and groovy melodies together with lots of
variations keep the listener engaged through the entire album and leave them wanting for more. Not much to say here but the same words I left in the Renoise forums under the album thread: This release just pure awesomeness.

Remixta plays first track from the album, You And Me. Not neccesarily my favourite track from the album, but as all the tracks are good and have their own special moments full of goodness needed to play I just chose the easy way out and started from the beginning.

Next Life – The Lost age

Something totally unexpected from Renoise scene. Some progressive metal music mixed with chiptune elements, complex rhythmic structures, ripping guitars and various electronic textures. This two man project from norway surely knows what they are doing, and not only on album — they have said to have great live shows. I have heard the claim from many people I trust so I am confident to recommend for you to go and see them next time they perform nearby.

The album contains 16 tracks, each of them less than two minutes long. The short tracks are bit problematic for radio DJ like myself, but together as an album work very well in continous pushing structure.

Remixta plays two tracks from this album.

Helvetikone – Bubble Hum

The artist name is said to be just some random made up word that doesn’t bring too many unrelated google search results, but thanks to the finger of fate the word sounds very close to Helvetin Kone which in finnish means “The Hells Machine”. This is actually what the music sounds like for me. Minimalistic electronica with touch of something really dark and hellish.

How exactly it sounds for you is up for you to decide as Remixta presents track number six, Bender, from the album. It is also interesting to note that the man behind this project is also the man behind Renoise. The allmighty Taktik himself.

Don’t listen to this stuff when riding in a bus, you may fall a sleep and miss your stop! To avoid getting into looprides with a bus, I ended this show with something bit faster. A remix of hit track from last time.

As I had many other tracks I wanted to play, but had already exceeded the time limits, I may release second podcast this month, with more dance oriented stuff aswell.

Track list

1. Mick Rippon – Legend of Woo (Xerxes Remix)
2. Oleksus – Дзвін (Ringing)
3. Void Pointer – Mushroom Fever
4. mr mark dollin – Long (From album 3 Smargaid Maerd)
5. Nine Inch Nails – Ghosts 32 (Xerxes Remix)
6. Knetter – Sketches of Mind (SDC 32. winner)
7. Void Pointer Feat. Jaede – Stuffed Animals (Haga & Plen’s Schizophrenic ’99 mix)

3 Smargaid Maerd

Todays episode of Remixta includes a track by mr. mark dollin from his latest album 3 Smargaid Maerd. One of the greatest electronica releases in this year.

I picked the track “Long” because this is my favourite track from the new album, it reminds me a bit more of the previous work from 2 Smargaid Maerd. Cold and dark, yet warm sounding and highly technical ambient soundscapes. His music is really original to him, and his distinct sound is something that really sticks with you.

This album, according to his own words, like previous albums in the series, deals with the meeting place of organic melody and quirky electronica: thematically dealing the unknown realms of delicate emotion and lucid dreaming. There is a general progression from loose improvisations to structured dramas.

You can fetch this album together with full digital artwork and his previous works from from his homepage.

Discuss this episode here (Renoise Forums)