Beatsystem - The Sound Of Two Eskimos Kissing (2011)

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Beatsystem - The Sound Of Two Eskimos Kissing (2011)

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Beatsystem aka Derek Pierce were formed 1985 to play systems music in rock venues and clubs. It consisted of various members of staff and students from his place of work and proved an interesting and rewarding experience. It was however abandoned in 1987 when too many students left after finishing their courses. Beatsystem then decided to become studio based. After two minor hits with dance tracks for Island records he returned to his main interest, electronic and computer music. The decision to used Csound was made so as to get away from the usual sequencing/synthesiser based electronic music found in rock, pop and dance music and to use the sort of software used in so called serious music. This idea to use research based software and techniques was appealing to EM:T records who gave him a chance to record his own CD’s for them. The CD “ EM:T 2297 “ was released in 1997 to critical acclaim. EM:T2297 was considered the most experiment of the EM:T releases. In 1998 the original Emit owners did a runner with the artists’ money & stock, they have however re-launched in November 2003, but managed to collapse again after only a short spell of operation.
Beatsystem then began learning Max/MSP software so as to be able to bring another new slant to his music. This led to several new tracks and Beatsystem were then signed to the French based Entropy label “The sound of two Eskimos kissing” is Beatsystem’s first release for the label.
The track “Corston” was the first piece to use a delay system based on prime numbers written in Max/MSP giving it a unique and unpredictable quality.
“Bangalore to….” was a major project using Csound and Composer Desktop Project and has been performed several times using a full surround sound system. Original sounds recorded in Bangalore have been manipulated using this software as well as sounds constructed in Csound eg the “bell” sounds to wards the end of this piece.
The title piece is based on a radio programme he heard about the Artic and Eskimos ability to find each other in areas with no obvious landmarks. The under lying drone was constructed in Csound and used as the base for some guitar improvisations.
“Red Black and Ignorant” was written for a play and again features the prime number delay system and is heavily influence by the work of “Fripp and Eno”.
Other tracks include radical remixes/workings of tracks originally release on EM:T as well as other new material written for Entropy Records.