colleen

Recently going through some family photos, I once again came upon this Christmas 1984 polaroid.

I already shared this picture a couple of years ago on my Facebook and website as part of a series on keyboard instruments in my albums: this Bontempi organ is the first instrument I ever asked for and owned, aged 8. I am sharing it again because it recently struck me as a beautiful coincidence that my one and only melodic sound source for the 7^th album I’m working on right now is an eerily similar-looking grown-up version of my Bontempi: the Yamaha Reface YC is red, small and humble-looking, but boasts 3 octaves instead of 2 (now that’s what I call progress!) and thankfully not the same sound (listen to “Organ Song 1995” on my Bandcamp if you want to hear what my Bontempi sounded like on a slowed down 4-track tape recorder, one of my very first solo recordings).

But most of all it’s the world of possibility contained in that moment of holding that precious first instrument that I want to connect with right now. When making music becomes your profession, an at first imperceptible and later more obvious downward slide is almost inevitably bound to occur: your passion-activity somehow becomes not just something you want to do, but also something you *have* to do, because if you don’t, at some point you’ll be out of the job you created for yourself (more thoughts on this in my epic back-from-silence posts from 2011 here and here). There is no miracle cure or easy way out of this feeling, but one thing I strive for is reconnect as much as possible with what it means and feels like to try something for the first time, that primal joy that stands and exists on its own, unadulterated by comparison with anything or anyone. It was just me making some melodic noise back then, and 36 years later I know I still want the same :-)

The Elka Drummer One is now ready for shipping, and it has struck me that had this happened to me a couple of years ago, I would have been really annoyed. I would have thought of how this was going to set me back in my album-making, and why had the pots failed, and when would the machine be back, etc, etc. Instead, because of life lessons learnt over the past few years, my reaction is: OF COURSE, it’s completely normal and to be expected that my half-century old Elka should have a few pot problems, even after being revised a couple of years ago. Since then the Elka has kept aging, just like I have, and therefore, its parts can – and will – fail, just like mine have – and will.

For personal and health reasons, the Elka has come to symbolize for me how utterly unrealistic it is to expect things to be in a permanent working order in our lives, and even more unrealistic the idea that if we can just obtain that *one* thing that’s still missing, then it will all be perfect: when I got the Elka in the summer of 2018, after being obsessed with it for several months (its rarity and the difficulty in obtaining it making it all the more desirable), I was convinced that once I had it in my setup, I would be making a new album in next to no time, because I felt so inspired, and I had also been donated gear by Moog, so what could go wrong? Well, I got the Elka, I have my dream setup, and guess what? It’s summer 2020 and my album is nowhere near completion. It’s getting there, but this is so far from my hope of the summer of 2018 that I just have to shake my head and laugh, because that’s just the way life is, whether I like it or not.

End of Sunday psychological-philosophical rant, now a few words about the photos: the amazingly-textured side panel, which even boasts a fleck that looks eerily like a raptor, the top side of the circuit (with the yellow on the left), and the underside again – please admire that beautiful black and grey patina on the back panel, it really reminds me of the Barcelona nightsky during its impressive summer thunderstorms!

A few days ago, I was on a mission to try and solve the problem of scratchy pots that had developed on my Elka Drummer One. My instructions: squeeze two drops of the professional cleaner supplied to me by Soundgas into the tiny gap you can see on each problematic pot’s mechanism. I was so nervous that I actually tried to squeeze the drops *without* the tiny tube being pierced, for a good 30 seconds. I then had to turn the pot “at least 15 times”, then repeat the operation. I actually turned the pots 30 times the first time, and then 30 times again the second time, going up to 50 for the two really scratchy ones: the bass drum and the short cymbal. I then had to reassemble the Elka, and test again.

I held my breath as I armed the record function on my DAW. Out of the 5 pots, 3 had become perfectly clean, but the bass drum and short cymbal were *exactly* the same.

This means that I’ve just had to pack the Elka so that it can go undergo a transplant operation at Soundgas headquarters, and I’m not really joking about the transplant thing: Gid told me the “new” (ie 50 year-old!) pots would have to come from a “donor machine”, so I asked him what that meant, wondering if I was missing a joke somehow, and I’ve learnt this is “the term we use for a machine that is giving (“donating”) its parts for spares to keep others going”. Isn’t that amazing?

More thoughts on the beautiful fragility of gear and instruments soon.

What is this naked Elka Drummer One doing in my studio, rising like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Well, this half-century-old beauty started to develop a few scratchy pots, which is no surprise given the less than ideal conditions I had to keep it in for the first part of its life with me (damp ground-floor studio in San Sebastián, Spain). In my Barcelona home studio the dampness situation is better, but still not ideal, especially in the summer months, and I do need to open the windows to let fresh air in, which means I’m also letting in dampness :-(

The lovely folks at Soundgas, who sold me this very rare machine, sent me a special elixir of life, along with instructions on how to proceed with the maintenance operation myself. I was really nervous at first, as it was my first time ever opening *any* piece of gear, let alone a quasi-museum piece, and the phrase “Slide the Elka out of its case” conjured up images of a snake shedding its skin, but… I looooved it!!! I was floored by just how beautiful the inside was, and found it moving to think that the machine was made in Italy in the late 60s, was then mostly used by Krautrock bands in the late 60s-early 70s, is now 50 years later mostly being sold by Derbyshire-based Soundgas, and here I am, a French woman in Barcelona, using it in 2020 :-) I can’t help but wonder who this particular unit belonged to, and if they are still alive.

To open the case I used a screwdriver given to me by my dad some 25 years ago, and the tiny brown box on top of the PA speaker in which I kept the screws was made by my maternal grandfather, and it also felt so right to be using these. I will post more pics this week because it’s just so beautiful, and will tell you how it actually went (suspense).

Artwork on the wall is original egg tempera and oil painting by Iker Spozio for my album A flame my love, a frequency, on Thrill Jockey, 2017.

I have completely closed the gap between the way I compose/make an album and the way I record it, they have become one and the same process, which means that whenever I come up with something that sounds potentially interesting, I’ll record it right away. But I went through many evolutions to arrive at my current setup for recording-as-I-compose (Scarlett Focusrite 18i20 soundcard + Soundcraft Signature 12MTK mixing desk).
For many years (2003-2015) I made music with acoustic instruments, most of the time going through a chain of pedals, one of them being the Boss Loopstation RC20 and then the RC30. Because the way I “compose” is through playing, it made sense to just record on the Loopstation when I got a decent idea, which means that recording the album really was a different process.

When I shifted to purely electronic music around 2016 with A flame my love, a frequency, one of the guiding principles was to not use looping pedals anymore, and since I had already recorded Captain of none in 2014/15 through my first decent soundcard, the Scarlett Focusrite 18i20, it just made sense to connect my ultra minimal setup (2 Critter and Guitari synths + 2 Moogerfooger pedals) to the Scarlett, and use that setup throughout the composing/recording process, bussing whenever necessary via my DAW (Acid – yes, I know 😁). But when the time came to play A flame live, I needed to bus the instruments and Moogerfoogers physically, which meant buying a mixing desk.

I came to loooooove using a desk, and short of having a fully analogue setup for this new album, I have managed to come up with a lovely hybrid setup, which I’ll share more in depth once I’m done with recording. It took me quite some time to come to something fully operational and that made sense for the way I work, and I don’t think the internet is full of clear descriptions of this kind of setup, so I’ll fill in that void once the real work is over.