Autechre Aural Rage

I only recently discovered that Danny Hyde has a solo project called Aural Rage. I ordered the album A Nature of Nonsense and it is fucking unbelievable!! Came out in 2005, I can't believe it took me so long to find it.

Danny worked with Coil for much of their career, contributing production and/or sound design to Horse Rotorvator, Gold is the Metal, Wrong Eye/Scope, Airborne Bells/Is Suicide a Solution, Themes for Derek Jarman's Blue, Windowpane, Love's Secret Domain, The Snow, Stolen and Contaminated Songs, Nasa-Arab/First Dark Ride, Worship the Glitch, pHILM, A Thousand Lights in a Darkened Room, The Remote Viewer, Black Antlers, The Ape of Naples and The New Backwards as well as Sleazy's solo stuff as The Threshold HouseBoys Choir.

This is the guy who gave Coil their high-tech production sound that made them stand out so much in the early nineties. Much of their work of this era pre-dated what came to be known shortly thereafter as "IDM" but what Coil and Danny were doing is arguably more experimental and impressive than what the IDM artists were doing up until around the Chiastic Slide era. Autechre themselves regularly state that Love's Secret Domain was a huge influence on them and in their Wire listening room interview they said they bought that and then tracked down every other Coil release they could find.

Danny's CD has guest appearances from Jhonn Balance and Sleaz. Balance's vocals on 'FJ Nettlefold' are particularly enjoyable, he gets increasingly more unhinged as the track goes on. The sound design on this is just stunning and it's pretty evident that Hyde is a rather strange character, although in a more humourous manner than Balance was

Those interested in supporting him rather than just filesharing it can buy a copy from the Aural Rage website

Downloading now

i remember sampling 'a nature of nonsense' after it came out and being not too impressed with it. its been a while so perhaps ill give it another try. i think 'fj nettlefold' features some of the last vocals balance ever recorded.. its important to note that hyde was never a member of coil. ive read a few interviews in which balance states there were points when working with him that he felt it necessary to say 'hang on a second, we're the group and youre the engineer'. but thats not to say that hyde didnt have an influence on coils overall sound.

on an autechre/coil note, wasnt there a plan at some point for them to record together? and it might have been a dj mix or something, but i thought i remember hearing an autechre remix of 'dark river' somewhere...

also, maybe someone should start a coil thread. there used to be one but it must have gotten wiped out with one of the various server crashes.

also, he apparently has fallen on some hard times as of late

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy2qgleuy84

I have a remix of Panic by Autechre.

it sounds like Gantz_Graf but less claustrophobic

  On 5/3/2010 at 5:19 AM, Z_B_Z said:

i remember sampling 'a nature of nonsense' after it came out and being not too impressed with it. its been a while so perhaps ill give it another try. i think 'fj nettlefold' features some of the last vocals balance ever recorded.. its important to note that hyde was never a member of coil. ive read a few interviews in which balance states there were points when working with him that he felt it necessary to say 'hang on a second, we're the group and youre the engineer'. but thats not to say that hyde didnt have an influence on coils overall sound.

 

on an autechre/coil note, wasnt there a plan at some point for them to record together? and it might have been a dj mix or something, but i thought i remember hearing an autechre remix of 'dark river' somewhere...

 

also, maybe someone should start a coil thread. there used to be one but it must have gotten wiped out with one of the various server crashes.

 

also, he apparently has fallen on some hard times as of late

Yeah he had a rough patch but he's all good now.

In another interview Balance states that they really should have made him a member but never did because they wanted him to be able to stand back and be more subjective, which they felt he couldn't do if he was "in the band".

The 'Dark River' remix was just an excerpt from an Autechre/Gescom DJ set that John Peel broadcast on BBC. It's not a remix as such, just some beats overlaid on top of the original.

Coil and ae were collaborating (ae talk about it in that same Wire listening room article I mentioned) but it never came to anything. That 'Panic' remix does appear to be genuine though, as it sounds very, very much like ae and Balance said in an interview that he'd like to give a few older tracks a new mix and would love to swing 'Panic' to ae so they could do a version.

i wonder if hyde feels he shouldve been made an official member. and yeah, now that im thinking of it, i remember reading some interviews in which they call him 'coils unofficial third member' (or something like that).

sampling some of 'nature of nonsense' again and it seems a bit more interesting than i remembered it being. is 'unearthly red' in any way similar to the one on coils 'live four'? the one on live four destroys.

i really wish hyde would have gotten sleazy do his cover art. its a little cringeworthy.

Yeah 'Unhealthy Red' is a much shorter, instrumental, more metal sounding version of 'An Unearthly Red' from Live Four. Very fucking cool track!!

The Aural Rage artwork is indeed awful. Absolutely horrid. But the music more than makes up for it, I can't stop listening to this...

edit: thinking about it, Sleaz has done some bloody awful CD art too (case points being Coil's Born Again Pagans, THBC's Form Grows Rampant) but chances are he could have done something a little classier (like TG's Part Two: The Endless Not)

alright, this album does indeed kick ass. i suppose i originally dismissed it offhandedly because of the cover art, 3 thirty second samples, and a fairly negative review from stylus. thanks for bringing it to my attention again. 'make room for the mushrooms' is positively psychotic. the only track that kind of misses for me is 'dub ya does one', only because the joke starts to get a little old. thought this was pretty cool>

  Quote

As far as I know, I was the first to use Time stretch abuse technique, on 1990's lsd album

i was ridiculously, blown away badly by this album, highly disappointed by it. , he abuses like 10 Reaktor Metaphysical Function presets on it unashamedly, i'm sure if i didn't use this plugin i would have better appreciation for it, but the plugins he's just hitting 'play' on aren't just like synth patches, when you load them up they sound like fully formed songs already. I am a little skeptical after listening to it what parts of Coil that he positively contributed to back in the day. Remember when Coil tried to blame him for using an un-changed Dr. Dre (NWA) sample for Protection? Maybe they were embarrassed of him back then too. The speech synthesizer on this album is also a huge WTF jarring experience. This album does not hold a candle to a single Coil project.

edit: i don't mean to be a 'hater' but the artwork to me perfectly encapsulates the music inside. Cheap, naive use of adobe photoshop colored pencil stroke filter on a photograph. Music contained herein, naive use of software synthesizers and effects using obvious overuse of DSP on samples.

don't want people to necessarily judge a book by it's cover, but in this case i think it's only fair we post it

whoops not the right one, but still you get the point

  On 5/3/2010 at 11:57 AM, Z_B_Z said:

  Quote

As far as I know, I was the first to use Time stretch abuse technique, on 1990's lsd album

very hard for me to believe considering the sounds contained on this album

i dont know man, i dont have the technical knowledge you do, but im liking what im hearing.

well let's post sample for the group the let them decide if this in any way lives up to the Coil sound or is even listenable

the reason this album causes such an emotional reaction in me is because i wasn't expecting something this abysmally bad. I always thought Danny Hyde was responsible for some of the goodness in Coil, but after hearing this i am convinced all of the parts i liked were Peter and Jhon's doing. even though i complain about newer Coil, most newer Coil sounds leagues more advanced than this CD. I like about 15% of the sounds on this album but it is continually punctuated by ridiculously out of place and jarring parts like this Stephen Hawing voice attempt

i certainly dont think its on a coil level. using the speech synthesizer is kind of the whole point of the joke, isnt it?

i guess, i mean i would be more likely to think it was a joke if Danny also said 'hahah yeah about half the songs on here are based on me hitting play on a Metaphysical Funktion preset, i did zero work to start the foundation of the songs, it was a conceptual joke to see if i can get away with passing someone elses music as my own'

edit: maybe his 2nd cd is better? I'm really sorry for having such a strong negative opinion of this album, i will stop shitting in this thread now

  On 5/3/2010 at 10:06 PM, Z_B_Z said:

i dont know man, i dont have the technical knowledge you do, but im liking what im hearing.

try to find Metaphysical function you will possibly be very shocked at what you hear. it was available as a Reaktor patch but now can only be found in stand-alone or VSt mode

it's actually a really cool plugin, that has a lot of nice presets on it that generated melody + beats that resemble a lot of Raster-noton stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7hqdet2ZuE

you won't hear any Aural Rage stuff on this video mind you

  On 5/3/2010 at 9:55 PM, Awepittance said:

he abuses like 10 Reaktor Metaphysical Function presets on it unashamedly, i'm sure if i didn't use this plugin i would have better appreciation for it, but the plugins he's just hitting 'play' on aren't just like synth patches, when you load them up they sound like fully formed songs already.

Gay. Well I need to get that plug-in, sounds like it would be loads of fun.

I still like the CD (especially FJ Nettlefold) but could live without the talking (Hawkings/Bush)

  On 5/3/2010 at 10:21 PM, Awepittance said:

  On 5/3/2010 at 10:06 PM, Z_B_Z said:

i dont know man, i dont have the technical knowledge you do, but im liking what im hearing.

 

try to find Metaphysical function you will possibly be very shocked at what you hear. it was available as a Reaktor patch but now can only be found in stand-alone or VSt mode

 

 

 

you won't hear any Aural Rage stuff on this video mind you

are there any videos available that could better help me to understand the hyde stuff? you say that these are already fully formed songs thats hes manipulating, but how is this different than manipulating a sample? just want to better understand the situation is all

i dont think there are any videos of people just cycling through the presets and hitting play, because that's what he's done on at least 3 tracks on this LP (that i can tell for sure) .

the difference? pretty vast imo. Making a song based on a sample you've found or gone record grate digging to find is far different than using a preset on a synthesizer (that makes a full beat and melody) and basing your song off it. If you've made a song doing either thing, not changing the source material in any way i still think it's a little bit cheap and lazy.

It (hitting play on presets that basically create whole songs) very much goes against the strong principals i hold as a musician, but i'm sure plenty of people out there have good fun making music out of sample library loop CDS and Garageband melody loops.

edit: Danny Hyde was also responsible for throwing in an unedited, non tempo changed, non pitched, uneffected loop verbatum from the NWA song 'express yourself' as the basis for the Coil track 'Protction'. This to me clues me in a little bit to where his sampling/reusing presets ethics lie.

of course me being such a big Coil fan and hearing for years that Danny Hyde was like the mysterious genius behind Coil's sound design made my expectations for Aural Rage ridiculously high. I was expecting something a little more experienced sounding with a more refined execution.

Similar thing happened when i first heard the only album involving Sean Booth solo, my expectations being high again caused me to have a near seizure when i eventually heard the final product

hmm.. seems like youre calling his ethics into question. im really on the fence abount this whole situation now. youd think a guy with as much knowledge and experience as him would be above hitting play on a preset. what would he have to gain by releasing a half assed album? im sure hes made next to nothin from it.. its weird, his bio is seems so impressive-

  Quote

Born in Newton abbott, Devon, I first worked in Point studios in 1982.

By 1984 I was producing Savage Progress, a mixture of folk, ethnic and dark sounds( 300,000 sales in Germany)

By 1985 I was working in paradise studios, Europe's first totally computerised studio.

 

 

I met Coil around then and proceeded to supply some noise on the fairlight 2 for various early projects before doing a whole host on the Horse rotavator album .

 

Coil taught me to enjoy noise creation again, and this led to working with Psychic tv and a whole bunch of noise pioneers.

 

In 1989 I got one of the first UK Akai S1000 samplers

1990 I was co producing coil along with programming/ remixing on a vast amount of rave things .

At this time I remixed Monsoons "Ever so lonely", Adamskis "Killer", Hypnotone and the Flowmasters "Let it take control"

As far as I know, I was the first to use Time stretch abuse technique, on 1990's lsd album

 

I met some interesting characters like adamski, but on the whole the Highlight of this period was Co producing/ writing on Loves secret domain , a session I wish was captured on Video tape, How to make a record the easy way-No, How to have fun- Yes!!!

 

My work co-producing Pop will eat itself -led to a stint in Madrid Producing/mixing fangoria for EMI Madrid .

 

 

 

Then followed the COIL/Remix period, where we Remixed NineInchNails , Depeche and Various other things in our Dark style .

 

Created the crazy Chopped vocal for " gave up" using a technique which I'm still asked HOW? - so ludicrous I'll keep it to myself

 

 

Some of my writing at this period was " first dark ride" and "nasa arab" .

We also wrote baby food, Stolen and contaminated songs and The first elph/eskaton projects .

 

Also Invited with coil to write on Derek Jarman's film Blue where we wrote a tune of melting disco

 

In 1995 I re processed the BLD songs and while mixing at my home studio came up with the filtered/re sampled sound used on the album,

That is what you hear all over Red skeletons, stone Circular .

 

In 1996 we Traveled over to Trent Reznors studio in New Orleans to complete the long awaited " backwards " album for Coil.

 

Once finished I proceeded to Complete my project " sub sonic Commune", which I finished in 1998, to be followed by a couple of years fighting the Publisher for my advance.

 

I then took a much needed break working in Music till 2002 when re acquainted with coil I proceeded to Write Unearthly red with Peter Christopherson.

 

Mixing " Remote viewer" also took place at this time.

 

Then I entered the phase of beginning the album " a Nature of Nonsense" also worth a listen is sensimilla dreams album

 

2006/2007 Saw me spend a year in asia where Christophersson and I wrote music for Black antlers, absynthe, remote viewer update and threshold house boys choir --( see clips on Blog page )--also coming is moons milk update

i've seen this thing before, its from his website right? Again only raising my expectations higher for someone who i used to consider (until i laid my ears on aural rage) probably the most accomplished talented sound designer working in digital/electronic music of the last 20 years.

the first listen was almost a horrific experience for me, i'm not exaggerating. when i heard the first metaphysical function preset i almost fell off my chair, and i think that was AFTER i already heard the Hawking impersonation.

which is also quite coincidental and funny to me because i did a track about 10 years ago with my good friend where we call out Danny Hyde for stealing from NWA in the song protection, at the end of the rap parody track. Steven Hawking makes a quest appearance and raps about Danny Hyde and Coil for about 2 minutes. Could Danny Hyde be inspired by a track i made teasing him 10 years ago?

yeah i remember you mentioning that.. man youre a buzz kill ;) i still love 'make room for the mushrooms' and 'unearthly red'

'protect yourself' the song calling out Danny Hyde is up on the GWH myspace page (4th song down)

http://www.myspace.com/gwhvselph

I'm still waiting for Drew Mcdowall's Screwtape album...

Interesting considering Sleazy still works with him to this day. And it's not like Sleaz would need help nowadays, especially seeing as he doesn't really even need an engineer (he doesn't record anything in a typical sense, it's all pretty much generated by his machines)