Bardo Thodol dotnet

Contribution to latest DWJ Mackenzie release, now available.

2011-12-13T13:37:00.000Z

Available this week is the latest solo release from Daniel W J Mackenzie (Ekca Liena, Plurals, etc). I contributed samples to tracks 2 and 6.

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://runningonair.bandcamp.com/album/return-written-arrange"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;'Return Written Arrange' by Daniel W J Mackenzie&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>
"Daniel W J Mackenzie is perhaps best known for his work as Ekca Liena, a droning guitar and electronic mesh of ambience, electronica and hints of doom. This alias has carved it’s place in the UK ambient underground. In addition, Daniel also records and performs with psychedelic drone outfit Plurals. Under his real name Daniel explores styles that are more intimate - his well received debut self-release Teeth Sleep Under Winking Black Eyelid is a melancholic and cinematic close focus study of the humble piano - and, in this case, rather more calculated conceptual works.

The core of Return Written Arrange uses input from a variety of musicians who were asked to provide sound recordings of their choice from a selection of musical pitches and durations of Mackenzie's own design. These were arranged in the order of when they were sent back and the resulting sequence was duplicated in a way that corresponded with the Fibonacci sequence, subjected to minimal production and compositional enhancements and left as semi-aleatoric pieces, as much constructed by chance and choice as they are bound by the rigidity of the sequence.

Surrounding the two main conceptual pieces (Return Written Arrange i and ii) are a series of shorter tracks intended to provide much more human counterparts. These feature the kind of sombre improvised piano that runs through Teeth Sleep... tinkering amid atmospheres drawn from the other tracks and words from Irish poet P. Scanlan. Together the different elements form a mysterious, enchanted and possibly unsettling release that speaks as much for the soul's significance in musical composition as it does the mind's.

Contributing Artists: Duncan Harrison, Jack Turquand, Andy Cartwright, Jannick Schou, Dave Hamilton-Smith, Kevin Ingham, Anne Hennies, Brian Grainger, Mass Roman, Andrew Mills, Michael Neaves, Ihor Dawidiuk."

You can stream this release via Bandcamp, where there are also links to buy it physically or digitally. Please give it a listen, I think it's beautiful. Thanks to Dan.

Cymophane is also coming very very soon, maybe a couple weeks later than planned (the 1st/2nd week of January I'd guess now), but it is definitely coming soon. I'm just tweaking the master now and the artwork is also reaching completion!

Keep listening.

Cymophane is complete!

2011-11-22T14:45:00.001Z

Just a quick progress post to let you know that all that's left to do before the Cymophane album is released is purely administrative now. The music is complete; the mix is complete; mastering has begun (which should be quite a simple job considering how strong the mix is) and the artwork is very nearly finished too. Release is set to be before Xmas as I want to finish 2011 on a massive high after a great year for my music projects. There's little else to say; Cymophane has hugely exceeded my expectations and I am so incredibly excited to see it released into the world.

Soon. So, very very soon.

Gnod - Vatican [Pupilar Dub] streaming on-line now!

2011-10-18T14:18:00.000+01:00

A new Pupilar remix for y'all to hear!!

Those lovely folk in Gnod have posted the remix I did of their stonking track Vatican to their SoundCloud, so go listen to the monster I created from their crashing Krautrocking grooves:

Vatican [Pupilar Dub] by GNOD

I am so incredibly happy with how this came out; this remix was the perfect opportunity for me to unleash my inner beast and really get that evil and heavy-as-fuck vibe seething through my veins! Hey, I don't have to talk about my music when you can crank it (and I really mean CRANK it) and let the apocalyptic beats and bass do the talking for me. I hope you like it!

Also, here's Gnod's original dance-floor version from their InGnodWeTrust LP:

Vatican by GNOD

... and, to complete the line-up, here is the sister Vatican Remix to mine, executed by the superb DrumCunt:

GNOD 'Vatican' (DrumCunt remix) by DRMCNT

Gnod's plan is to get a Pupilar/DrumCunt - Vatican Remixes 12" pressed by someone, somehow. Obviously, this would rule if it could happen, but until then, enjoy them both on SoundCloud and leave your comments if you dig what we did!

Also, massive Cymophane news coming very very soon... the excitement and anticipation is near killing me!!

Cymophane album completion imminent.

2011-09-06T15:33:00.000+01:00

Second post of the day is to update you all on Cymophane.

The Cymophane album (the collaboration between Pupilar and SDZH) is falling into place extremely rapidly at the moment. After finishing the recent Pupilar remix for Gnod, I've had some time off work and have been devoting all my time to Cymophane again. There is only about 1/3rd of the final track to finish, then, after final mix tweaks, the whole album will be complete! This project has been ongoing for about 3 years now and I personally have contributed many hundreds of hours; epic doesn't even begin to describe it! The tracks we previewed with the CymoMix last year have been tweaked further (and changed dramatically in some cases) and everything is sounding really really good. Over the next month I will finish the music, tweak the mixes, master and then release it. The plan for releasing it is to go with Bandcamp. I sent out a lot of promos earlier this year and even though the feedback I recieved was really positive, I couldn't find a suitable label to work with in releasing this. To be honest, I'm not precious about physical releases, all I want is for as many people as possible to hear my music. So, inspired by the success people like Cloudkicker have had with this, I'm going to go with the pay what you want (or pay if you want) release model. Of course, this won't merely amount to sticking some MP3s on-line as we want all aspects of this release to shine, so I have asked the immensely talented Paul Clavé to work with us in conjuring visually stunning artwork for this release. I intend for Paul's artwork to be included with the album release as a high resolution PDF attachment and possibly also available as physical art prints too.

Maybe as soon as next month this will all start to form a cohesive whole. More updates as it all comes together; I am so excited about this, I can't even begin to describe how happy I am with it in it's near completed state.

Post Altitude [Pupilar Dub] streaming on-line now.

2011-09-06T10:32:00.000+01:00

OK, first blog update of the day is about Pupilar.

As I've mentioned a bunch of times already (I hope you've been listening) the Ekca Liena début album reissue is released, on-sale and on-line. Listen to it or buy it whichever way you prefer! Also, as of this week, Dead Pilot Records have put the remix CD tracks on-line for you all to stream too, so for those who haven't heard it yet, here is my Pupilar remix of Post Altitude in it's entirety!

03 Post Altitude (Remix by Pupilar) by Dead Pilot records

I hope you like it, I've been aching for people to hear my most recent Pupilar tracks, I'm really pleased with how they came out. Hopefully the Gnod remix I completed recently can be unleashed soon unto the world too.

That's the Pupilar news, a big update about Cymophane is coming next...

Ekca Liena reissue on sale & new remix for Gnod complete.

2011-06-20T12:10:00.001+01:00

A few pieces of activity to update you with. Firstly, the long awaited reissue of Ekca Liena's "Slow Music for Rapid Eye Movement" is today officially on sale and shipping from Dead Pilot Records. As you know, I worked with Dan Ekca Liena to strip the album down to component level, re-mixed the whole thing from scratch, mastered it, contributed a Pupilar remix to the accompanying bonus CD (with other contributions from Aidan Baker, Clem Leek and others) and mastered that CD too! A massive project which turned out incredibly well, I'm really proud of this one. Please go listen to the album on either Soundcloud or Bandcamp and if you like what you hear and also want to hear the remixes on the second CD, please buy it from the Dead Pilot store.

Second bit of exciting news is that I'm just finalising the master for a remix I've done for the Manchester band, Gnod. It's a remix of the track Vatican from their new album, InGnodWeTrust, which has just been released on sexy white vinyl via Rocket Recordings. The original is a monster of a track and my remix has dragged it into a whole new world of spiralling madness, this could possibly be the best Pupilar yet! Gnod plan to release a remix album of InGnodWeTrust sometime in the near future with some other amazing artists (I'm keeping quiet of who right now, but trust me, there are some amazing people doing incredible remixes for this project!). I'll post more info about what's happening with this as/when I know more, but I'm well excited for people to hear this remix as, I reckon, it proper ROCKS!

Ekca Liena - "Slow Music..." now on SoundCloud

2011-03-04T09:26:00.000Z

Ekca Liena's "Slow Music for Rapid Eye Movement" début album reissue, mixed and mastered by Pupilar, is now on SoundCloud in its entirety for you all to stream!

Ekca Liena - Slow Music for Rapid Eye Movement by Dead Pilot records

The double CD version of the album is also available to pre-order from the Dead Pilot Records webstore, which includes the second CD of remixes of tracks from the album, including the devastating remix of Post Altitude, also by Pupilar!

Ekca Liena - Into The Wind

2011-02-20T13:09:00.002Z

Here's a promo video for the reissue of Slow Music For Rapid Eye Movement by Ekca Liena. As you know, I was producer for this project, mixing the entire album from the ground up, mastering both the album and the accompanying remix CD and submitting a Pupilar remix of the track, Post Altitude, for the remix CD too!

Release is imminent!

Progress Report

2010-11-01T15:15:00.005Z

Just a quick progress report to let folk know what I'm up to. Hope those reading/listening have been enjoying the Cymophane promo mix, the final couple of tracks to complete the album are in production and I'm mega excited for this bad-boy to drop! I've still gotta get my arse into gear to pester labels to see if anyone wants to release it, I hope someone will, that would be pretty cool...

In the meantime I've just finished the re-working/re-mixing/re-mastering of Ekca Liena's fantastic début album, Slow Music for Rapid Eye Movement. As you can see from the link, Norman Records LOVED the original release when it came out 18 months ago, and the lovely folks at Dead Pilot Records have decided that a limited 100xCDr run just wasn't doing it justice, so they're giving it a fully pressed, long run CD release in the coming months. This is where I came in as, having befriended the lovely Dan "Ekca Liena" MacKenzie via internet communications, I offered my help in giving the album a really good polish to get it sounding as brilliant as it could possibly be. This wasn't just a simple re-mastering job; Dan tirelessly bounced down every single individual stem of every single track so I could re-work the entire album's mix to make it absolutely shine! Dan also took the opportunity to re-record and enhance a few of the album's sections, so for those who loved the original release, you're gonna be knocked out by this really special reissue! And if that wasn't enough, there will be a bonus CD accompanying this reissue full of remixes of tracks from the album by some absolutely wonderful artists, including a very special Pupilar remix! Said remix is being worked on right now and, I warn you, it's gonna be dark, dank and dubby!

So, yes, it looks like a few new Pupilar related releases will be coming out at roughly the same time in the new year, so keep a look out.

Cymophane is GO!

2010-08-24T11:10:00.002+01:00

Right, as promised (later than anticipated, but what's new) the Cymophane promo mix is ready and online to whet your appetites for the forthcoming album!

<a href="http://cymophane.bandcamp.com/track/cymomix-aug-2010">CymoMix [Aug 2010] by Cymophane</a>

Cymophane is a collaboration between Ian "SDZH" Ainslie and Kevin "Pupilar" Ingham. An ethos of evocative film sound design married with dub, techno, breaks and bass bridges the past, present and future of electronic music, veering between textured calm, gushing emotion and pounding intensity.

More info about Cymophane in my previous post.

So, yes, little more needs to be said; finally Cymophane can speak for itself! Hope you all like what we've presented for you here and it gets you interested and excited about the forthcoming album. There's some really brilliant surprises waiting in the final release, this mix hints at some of the magic but doesn't give it all away. I'm bubbling with excitement for you all to hear the final product so I better get back into worker slave mode and get it finished!

Cymophane is imminent!

2010-07-23T11:06:00.003+01:00

Long time no post... so nothing new there then. I've been working hard on music for the past year now and it's almost ready to drop! This post is a heads-up, letting those interested know what sounds are coming from my direction in the next couple of months.

Firstly, and most excitingly, is that the first wave of Cymophane is almost ready to be unleashed. Cymophane is a project Ian "SDZH" and myself have been working on for about 18 months now. We have an album about 75% complete, so to start getting the sounds we've been creating out into the real world we will be putting out a "Cymo-mix" in the next week or so. I can openly, hand-on-heart state that this is the best music I have ever been involved with; I am chuffed to pieces with all aspects of this project and it has been an absolute joy and pleasure in working with Ian to create it. We're talking Future Sound of London, Coil, Dub, Techno, huge atmospheric ambience and serious John Carpenter soundtrack worship here, swaying between evil, gritty darkness and gushing, emotional beauty. The mix will serve as a teaser, a taster and promotional tool to start getting this project known about with a full album hopefully completed by the new year.

Once the Cymophane mix is out I'll be working with the extremely talented Daniel Mackenzie, aka Ekca Liena, in reworking, remixing and remastering his stunning début album, Slow Music For Rapid Eye Movement for re-release on Dead Pilot Records. This re-release will also include a bonus CD of artist's contributed remixes, including an exclusive Pupilar remix of a track from the album. This is going to be a really wonderful release and I'm extremely excited to be involved.

Finally, I'm in the process and updating and improving the Bardo Thodol dotnet/Pupilar/Cymophane web presence. For you linking and sharing pleasure we now have the Bardo Thodol dotnet Facebook page, which hopefully will get updated a little more often than here, the Cymophane Bandcamp page (coming soon) and the Bardo Thodol dotnet Soundcloud page (coming soon, once I've figured out what it does). This will leave the Pupilar/Cymophane Myspace pages redundant so they will be getting deleted next week. No one uses that hideous site any more (other than spammers) so I don't expect these will be missed.

OK, less talking and more action. The Cymophane mix will be coming in about a week, I'm really looking forward to letting you all hear what I've been keeping so close for so long.

2 of 2 new Pupilar remixes online!

2009-12-25T16:03:00.000Z

... and here's the second remix, completed only yesterday!

<a href="http://pupilar.bandcamp.com/track/infinitus-ensemble-kleine-dada-hymne-pupilar-version">Infinitus Ensemble - Kleine Dada-Hymne [Pupilar Version] by Pupilar</a>

This is a remix of the track, Kleine Dada-Hymne, by Infinitus Ensemble (www.myspace.com/infinitusensemble). This will be released by IE at some point in the near future, but until then, here it is for you all to hear right now! It's pretty far removed from the original IE track, but that's the way I like to do remixes: by taking the original track components and re-imagine something really really different. I'm very pleased with how this track turned out, it's a real ugly monster of a tune! It's also good to release it at the same time as the Immune remix as they contrast each other well; the Immune track being very spacious and ambient and the IE track being really dense and heavy - see, I have a "range" and everything! As with the Immune track, stream/download/share this track in whatever format you so desire via Bandcamp. I hope you enjoy them and I look forward to following this more Beats 'n' Bass direction for Pupilar in 2010.

Speaking of following a direction in 2010, now that these tracks are completed and released, my absolute focus for at least the next 6 months will be working more on Ian SDZH and my Cymophane project. Currently, we have 3 completed tracks, 2 more in progress and the intention of at least another 1 to complete a full album. I'm REALLY excited about these tracks, we have taken our time to evolve our separate styles into a beautiful new sound and we become increasingly excited the more we work on it. I'm hoping to have a 4th track completed over the holiday break, then soon after, put out a promo of edits of these finished tracks, to start getting our sounds heard in anticipation of the albums completion. So, keep an eye on things here as I hope that should start lurching forth into the world pretty soon.

Right, back to making more music.

Peace.

1 of 2 new Pupilar remixes online!

2009-12-22T15:03:00.000Z

This is the first post on the new Bardo Thodol dotnet Blogger page. I'll be redesigning all my web stuff around using this for news updates and Bandcamp for hosting/streaming my music from now on. This should make things far easier to share and Bandcamp's music streaming/downloading options are far better than anything I could do on my basic html site.

This is also the first bit of Pupilar news in a while, but, to make up for the quietness, I'll be posting two new Pupilar tracks for you to hear in one week! So, here's the first:

<a href="http://pupilar.bandcamp.com/track/immune-selling-screen-pupilar-version">Immune - Selling Screen [Pupilar Version] by Pupilar</a>

This is a remix of the track, Selling Screen, by the band, Immune (www.myspace.com/immunemusic). Immune's version is on their myspace player if you are interested in hearing what their original sounds like. My version was completed in 2008 with the intention it would be included on a planned Immune EP. Unfortunately, this EP never came to be, so here, instead, is the track for you all to enjoy. I've given it a 2009 spit and shine to make it sound better than ever, so if you're one of the few who've heard it before, still give it a listen. I'm still really pleased with this track, it showcases a far more conventionally "structured" form and utilises rhythm and beats more prominently, which is the direction Pupilar seems to heading in right now. I hope you enjoy it. You can stream this direct via this Bandcamp player or download the track for free in all sorts of formats, including lossless FLAC (Bandcamp is ace!).

Within the week I should have the second Pupilar remix I've recently completed also online and I'll divulge some information on how the Cymophane project is going too!

Peace.