Gescom's Key Nell drums

[zkom]

The VI Scose Poise thread was so much fun I thought I'd start one on Gescom's Key Nell which is one of my favorite EPs ever. So, how do you think the drum sounds in Key Nell tracks were made? I think most of them are found sounds processed and looped. I think I can also hear the "mic air" and a reverb from a relatively small room with poor acoustics in some of them.

 

So, track by track..

 

Key Nell 1 sounds like a processed hip hop drum loop(s) until about 1:30 when a new bit of rhythm comes in that reminds me of a ping pong ball being slammed against a table.

 

Key Nell 2 starts with maybe a processed hihat or a sample of something metallic, then at about 0:40 comes several unrecognizable mechanical sounds. Like a failing motor or something? After about 5:20 it sounds like a processed drum loop.

 

Key Nell 3 drums sound like somebody is slamming a chair or something against the floor + some other weird sounds that make it sound like a big moving mechanical engine.

 

Key Nell 4 drums sound like some cutting instruments (big scissors, some cutting machine?) and metallic things being slammed against each other. With the bass drum again sounding like something heavy being slammed against the floor in some distance away in a hall or something.

[sweepstakes]

I think it's just some metallic or wooden objects they manipulated, much like you described, but then they compressed/distorted the recordings, sampled them at a low sampling rate like 8kHz, and then chopped or arranged them as though they were breakbeats, playing a lot of them at a lower frequency than they were recorded. I believe the sound has as much to do with how the sounds were sampled, processed, and rearranged as it does with what was originally recorded, especially as far as the machine/engine movement you mention which could be implied by rapidly repeating one of these samples like a drum roll, as in Key Nell 3. This technique would be congruent with their aesthetic of combining ideas from musique concrète and hip hop.

 

A few years ago I did something like this with a tin can full of ice water, a tape dictaphone, and an SK-1. The sounds aren't as aggressive as Keynell's but to my ears the texture is similar - it has a lot of the same crunch and aliasing:

 

[media=]http://soundcloud.com/undergroundclouds/ice-water-tin-dictaphone-sk1-x[/media]

[zkom]

Yes, there maybe some bit crunch type effect from low sampling/playback rate. It creates some nice harmonics if there's no LP filter to cut them off and they show up as kind of symmetric peaks in the spectrum in the higher frequencies above the sampling rate. I think at least the snare rush type of sound is crunched in the beginning of Key Nell 2.. I'm seeing some peaks in there and it sounds crunched..

[marf]

love the snare in this

 

 

[zkom]

Yeah, the snare sounds like a short clip of some longer sound. Like a sort of scraping sound or vinyl scratching.