Incredible party and still the bestselling release on Bandcamp - thank you! PCA Q&A Part One today
Hi friends - hope all good :)
So that went well! Thank you all for coming to the party last night, Martin and I were so grateful for all the kind words and positivity for the album - amazing crowd, well over two hundred people tuned in!
We’ve got such a wonderful crew of regulars and awesome to see so many new faces - much love and welcome to you all :)
After all the messages from people that missed out on the first run, knew the second run was much anticipated - but when it dropped and the party chat feed blew up it was jaw-dropping to see. Don’t think I’ve ever typed so fast in my life, tried to thank everyone but if I missed you - thank you!
Would have easily sold-out of the second run too so will be increasing my order this morning so everyone gets a chance. That’ll be confirmed shortly then that’ll be that, so if want they’re still available for now.
Still the bestselling release on
- awesome to see it up there next to some great other music - looking forward to the new Biosphere on AD 93!Much love to Bandcamp for everything they do - shout-out to
special thanks to him, highly recommend subscribing to his page!
So now Part One of our Q&A with Martin - he’s such a good example of an artist with a wonderful ear and refined sensibilities, coupled with a deep knowledge of equipment and how best to use it to make the music he wants to make.
Thanks to him!
Please tell us a bit about your background and history in music
I always had a keen interest in music from an early age, as a child I was an avid listener and one of my earliest memories is of sitting at my grandma’s house with headphones on, listening to her Beatles records.
Later on I had a very rudimentary recording setup, with a cassette four track and a load of guitar pedals. I used to make weird collages with BBC sound effect tapes and synth with guitar.
At some point I realised that it was possible to actually get a job using some of these skills, so I moved up to London and enrolled on a sound engineering course at Wandsworth College. I managed to get a role as a tea boy at Milo Studios in Hoxton and worked my way up to position as an engineer: recording, programming and mixing. I started using studio downtime to work on my own productions (there are still some floating around out there as Jackal and Stratus)
After about 15 years of studio life, I’d had enough of the long hours so I moved back out to the countryside and got a regular job.
That’s about the time that I started Pye Corner Audio.
Please can you describe a bit about your general philosophy and process as an artist?
I try to come at everything with quite a minimal mindset, striving to use as few pieces of equipment as possible to come to an outcome. I find the tyranny of choice quite paralysing, so the fewer choices I’m left with, the better.
What does quiet details mean to you and how did you use that to approach this album?
I’ve always been fascinated by the hiss, hum and other sonic artifacts that are usually eradicated or minimised. They are the quiet details that I’m interested in!
I spent quite a bit of time setting up microphones to capture some of these artifacts, such as recording the physical sound of the tape spooling through my Chorus-Echo, or micing up the speakers of the ARP 2600.
I chose a limited palette of gear for these recordings, limiting myself to the ARP 2600, Soma Cosmos looping delay, RE501 Chorus-Echo, and a very small selection of modular gear.
Shout-out today to one of our favourite people - the legendary Neil Mason over at
More lovely coverage of qd34 in today’s issue, starting with the very kind intro:
I’ve said this before about the quiet details releases and I’m going to say it again. This is qd34, we’re 34 releases deep into the series and Alex has the temerity, the audacity, to casually drop in a release by Pye Corner Audio. It blows my mind how good this series is that you can drop in a big gun like this 30-odd releases down. Arguably, you could say Alex does it all the time, every month, but there are names that stop you in your tracks when they casually get dropped in – zakè, Ian Boddy, Polypores, Loula Yorke.
another excerpt:
The cornerstone is the the wonderful ‘Infinite Symphony’, which again starts off promising maybe something else might happen. Tense strings sweep, an almost melody appears, a pensive single piano note chimes and those sweeping strings build until there’s an almost melody, that could grow into something kind of Vivaldi-like. That piano reappears and you hold your breath as the strings swell into something very beautiful.
Read the rest here, and make sure to subscribe for some of best regular music news!
Much love friends, huge thanks again, and have a great weekend!
Alex
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