Polypores Q&A Part Two and last day of half-price!

Huge thanks for a wonderful fwf party yesterday too x

Mar 21, 2025

Hi friends - hope all good :)

The love keeps pouring in for Stephen’s stunning I Wish There Was a Place Like That - thank you so much from both of us!

One more day to pick up the digital half-price, a rapidly dwindling stock of CDs still left too.

Massive thanks also to everyone that came to the fields we found rhythm structures 01 Listening Party - was an awesome crowd and so positive about this release - extremely grateful for all your comments and support!

resolve / relate 03 coming next week - more horizontal deep-listening harmonic interactions for you to sink into :)

Both and everything else included in the Bandcamp subscription - massively appreciate everyone who puts their trust in me and supports my music - so want to make sure it’s good value for money, loads more to come!

Now time for the Polypores Q&A Part Two - enjoy!

Please can you give us an overview of your studio and favourite instruments?

My main (and favourite) instrument is my Eurorack modular synthesizer, and I've recently been using that alongside an Elektron Syntakt. However, I used none of those things for this release! For this album I used the Make Noise "Easel", which is essentially three different MN machines (0-Coast, 0-CTRL, Strega) which I put together on a stand. I supplemented them with a 20hp Pod containing a joystick and a quantizer. I played them through a series of pedals - Montreal Assembly Count To Five for pitch shifting, Boss DD7 and EHX Memory Man for delay, EHX 720 and Canyon for looping. I wanted to do something using this fairly constrained setup to force myself into different methods of thinking and composition.

Please can you gives a quick breakdown of how you made each track?

It was over a year ago and I can't remember the specifics, but the process for each track was fairly similar. They all basically started out as long jams, ranging from 10 minutes to 2 hours each. I recorded hours and hours of music, getting completely immersed in the textures and sequences. I did a lot of stuff with looping, having loops that drift slightly out of phase with each other, looping sequences which change slightly over time, drones which decay into noise... I was listening to a lot of Steve Reich at the time, and I think you can hear some of that in there. But also a lot of Emeralds and Golden Retriever, with these huge, densely textured soundscapes.

Once I had all this raw material recorded, I set about editing it down into more manageable and coherent pieces. Some tracks remained pretty much intact as a single take. Others were layered combinations of different jams. There were some sections which were completely without melody, just noise/texture. So these layered nicely with the more melodic/harmonic components, to give me the thickness and density I was looking for. I think my favourite track, Zones Unknown, is the best example of this. It was a really fun approach, almost like creating a DJ mix out of my own music, rebuilding and recontextualizing these raw jams into more coherent tracks. I've not worked that way before, it added a whole new dimension to the process, so I could weave these dense sound tapestries out of my own raw materials.

Now some shout-outs:

qd31 Polypores

David James with the inclusion on his listening list over on Bluesky

qd30 Jordan GCZ

Joe Muggs playing a track on his excellent Multiversal Discernment show on ROVR

Legend DJ Morpheus including a track on the perfectly titled Lysergic Factory

qd29 ASC

Jenus opening this lovely mix with a track from the album

fields we found - rhythm structures 01

Finally very thankful to Neil over at Moonbuilding for the wonderful words about rhythm structures 01 - so pleased he can relate to the music, hope you can all connect with it! Here’s an excerpt:

And guess what? Yup, beats! ‘Rhythm Structures’ is the opposite of his long-form deep listening ‘resolve / relate’ excursions and they are such a joy. Alex talks about his formative musical experiences on dancefloors across the UK and Europe from the late 90s onwards and explains that his new series is new music for those times. It’s all recorded to 1/4-inch tape, live from his machines, no edits, “just raw and honest music”. As someone who frequented the same sort of clubs at the same sort of time, this stuff resonates deeply. “Hope you enjoy,” says Alex in the notes. I do, really do. There’s five tracks here for £3.75 or get it all, everything he does for £40 a year. Please support this man, his work - not to mention his new-found work-rate - is phenomenal. Love it.

Read the rest here: