河童、川の精霊現る (Kappa, the river spirit rises), an electronic musical soundscape using found-sound and voltage-control. The piece takes its inspiration from the Japanese mythical water-imp ‘Kappa’ often the cause of much distraction for thirsty pedestrians on their way home from a hard day’s work.

 

the piece was created through live performance with a new modular instrument, and other clock-able devices.

 

the patch is centred upon the Japanese scale Hirojoshi. The Make Noise René, and Harvestman’s Stillson Hammer provide sequencing for a Pitsburgh Synthesizer Box through a slowly evolving Deopfer Wave-Multi, as well as two instances of a Make Noise / Soundhack TelHarmonic. Bass is courtesy of the Arturia Micro-Brute, and the Drums are generated from a Teenage Engineering PO12 with live parameter locks for glitchness. Reverb and ambience are both generated with a Make Noise / Soundhack Erb-Verb and Mutable Instrument’s Clouds. Samples are processed through two instances of Clouds, which are performed live into a stereo track in Ableton. The final version presented here is an edit of three separate performances, each recorded live into Albleton Live 9.6.1.

 

accompanying video footage was captured in both Europe and the far East.