Lush harmonic techno, giant chords and a persistent beep to the beat.

The post Listen Carefully appeared first on Canton Becker.

The other day my kid had me listen to this haunting Tool track Faaip De Oiad which samples a phone call made to Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM radio show. The caller frantically relays a bunch of Area 51 conspiracies, and that got me to remembering about an afternoon in January 1998 when I explored the area myself.

I was demoing my company’s Internet music software at NAMM – the annual music business convention in Las Vegas. We were given a spare day, so I rented a car and drove as close as I could to Area 51. At the time, I was a compulsive listener to Art Bell’s radio show, so I knew I had to at least visit the famous black mailbox and stop for a drink at the “little A’Le’Inn”. While I was there I pulled out my minidisc recorder and interviewed the locals about their experiences living out in this wasteland by the famously secretive military base.

Today, 26 years later, I’m releasing “Area 51”, the audio-poem I assembled that year.

The post Area 51 appeared first on Canton Becker.

Moody thick drum ‘n’ bass. Starts off with almost classical/orchestral elements, then the drop, then a little more banging. Lots of arpeggios and melodic content.

The post Cost of Difference appeared first on Canton Becker.

This was the third track in my one song a month project. Here I’m playing around with polyrhythms (3 against 4 against 5 against…) and some nice pure synth tones. It’s in a major key, which is really rare for me.

The post December V appeared first on Canton Becker.

This was the second track in my one song a month project. The sample you hear in this deep tribal house track is from a wonderful collection of records I found recorded in 1952 — famous anthropological field recordings by Hugh Tracy. More or less, the fellow who introduced African music to white people. This particular sample is from a humorous Kenyan love song from the Kipsigis Tribe.

The post Kipsigis Love Song appeared first on Canton Becker.

Happy melodic techno. 122 BPM, starts off in a mellow place then gets bouncy and fun. Vocal sample is from Richard Kilmer’s LibriVox public domain reading of The Night Horseman by Max Brand (1920).

The post The Great River appeared first on Canton Becker.

I love the album “Chants of India” by Ravi Shankar, and in particular the track that features this chant:

asato ma sad gamaya / From ignorance, lead me to truth
tamaso ma jyotir gamaya / From darkness, lead me to light
mrtyor ma amrtam gamaya / From death, lead me to immortality.

Here’s a funky buzzy-breaks dance track I wrote that starts with this chant:

The post Gamaya appeared first on Canton Becker.

My first original techno track in a long, long while. Lush, layered, moody, epic. Composed in daily 20 or 30 minute stolen workday moments over the course of several weeks.

Finished this during a moment in history when 2,000 Pakistanis have died and 20 million are injured or homeless as a result of massive flooding which in many ways is eclipsing the last three major natural disasters combined.

If this creative-commons released free tune gets your head bobbing and heart throbbing, consider making a donation to one of these many four-star charities providing relief to those displaced by the waters.

The post Floodwaters appeared first on Canton Becker.

On this very snowy Santa Fe morning and with one week left until the 2008 Winter Solstice, I’m pleased to release this new song for free under a creative commons license. Snow Break is a 92bpm ‘breaks’ piece based around a sampled string melody from a 1960’s Mellotron tape loop. (The Mellotron was the original pre-digital sampler, a massive and fiddly organ that triggered the playback of tape loops instead of tone wheels…)

It’s been years since I’ve played around in the 90-bpm breaks range. Having that extra time/space between the beats makes it possible to play with wicked bass sounds and long cymbals – things that are hard to squeeze into my usual 140-175bpm range. This is also the first song I’ve mastered using Logic’s built-in multiband compressor and adaptive limiter (instead of an off-the-shelf mastering tool like Yamaha’s finalizer or T-racks.) I think the Logic plugins preserved a lot of the crispness and space that would have been muddied up by the other harder-edged mastering tools. This is the final (13th) mix of this song.

As heard in a fire arts performance

More about the awesome Copper Lantern Fire Theater

Here too…

The post Snow Break appeared first on Canton Becker.

Wow this song was a long time in the making. 12+ months? Not sure if it’s done yet — this mix feels a little thick and awkward at times — but it’s done enough to let me move on to some other tracks in the near term.

174 BPM d’n’b, growly nasty bassline, occasional explosive speaker-ripping kicks, and an acid synth line that snuck in from my techno personality.

The “This song is a serious song, isn’t it?” sample is from this very silly record.

The post Serious Song appeared first on Canton Becker.

Composed for Benjamin Becker, born Feb 12, 2008. 102 bpm. Ambient groove deep ethno dub. Usually I make music on a Macintosh running Logic Audio and a sizable amount of outboard gear… but this one was composed entirely on a Palm Pilot T|X using Bhaji’s Loops between the hours of 3am and 5am while lying […]

The post Benbient appeared first on Canton Becker.