Last year I met up with the eclectic sonic alchemists Actual Figures to improvise new music. We had fun, went over the top and back again, made weird things happen and let our worlds collide. Have fun with it as we had a lot making it.
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Actual Figures – drum machines, synthesizers, samples, effects
Window Magic – synthesizer, bass synth, cassettes, effects
Recorded by Brandon Davis
Mastered by Andreas Bonkowski at Magic Window
actualfigures.com
windowmagic.pm
blooha.net
"Actual Figures and Window Magic are, respectively, a radical voodoo disco duo and a one-man soundscape of tape loops and robot lullabies. The lovechild of these two harrowing forces of nature is divided into two chapters of seductive doom that end in breathtaking devastation. Recorded over the course of one evening in the outskirts of Berlin, both tracks are free-formed and unedited as part of a larger live session, with no rules, guidelines, or outtakes. The marriage of audio-montage of American fringe-culture footage and old films with floating electronic melodies destroys any sense of linear reality, as the sound slowly swells into waves of insanity interspersed with extended lulls of ceremonial bass drums, radiating keys, reverberating bells, and fits of static electricity. Via repetition of audio-montage, the song haunts itself, until it starts to change shape. As in stages of sleep, it picks up pace into an ecosystem of seemingly interacting electronic loops, layered on top of and within each other. And just when it’s about to unhinge once more, the seas calm, submerging once more into ritualistic bass rhythms, layered with audio-montage and deep-blue distorted tones for a fragmented dreamlike effect. The end seems to linger at the edge of experience, looking back over the damage it has caused. Through near-subsonic bass notes, the music reaches the rest of the body before it registers in the ears, washing over the body in a hypnotizing maelstrom of primordial sound waves. In continuous cycles of build-up, where the beat almost drops but always stops short, disintegrating, it leaves its already weary listeners begging to be satisfied but never quite gives in. And yet, we press replay -- it is the nightmare that tempts us back to sleep."
– Ani Alexandra