Back in April of 2023 I was feeling really disconnected from any actual creative process when it came to making sound. If I remember correctly I'd just disconnected all of my synths and had most of my gear in a pile on the floor of my office. I put my PE Tracker on my desk and started listening. I had tried using the record radio feature to browse around and listen, but this specific night I kept coming back to one of our local christian radio stations WFUR 92.9FM, and 91.3 WCSG.
As the child of parents who attended a Christian Reformed Church in West Michigan I grew up listening to WCSG; in the car, on the speakers in many of the stores where we shopped, and on the small radio I kept in my room. If I wasn't tuning in for the latest episode of Adventures In Odessey my ears were filled with church music standards and the sounds of Amy Grant and the Newsboys.
Christian radio is an interesting thing. Listen long enough and you'll hear lots about the love of an eternal, omnipotent, and loving creator, maybe a morality play praising the virtuous men and women of the bible, often a sermon, and usually a weather report at the top of the hour, but rarely any news. On their webpage, WCSG is quick to point out that they are not a for-profit operation and are supported by appreciative listeners and local businesses. Even as a kid I understood that the "thank yous" to local businesses that support the station were advertisements, if implicit. Growing up as the child of a father who worked as the Crusade Coordinator for an evangelistic ministry, and a mother who kept the books for non-profits I understood that most kids had parents who had jobs, and my parents also had jobs, and that the work of the church is business, with office hours and paychecks, and those on-air acknowledgements were advertisements. I was like, 8, and I got that.
Back to April of 2023: I was feeling uninspired, and a certain amount of discomfort in general that I had been overcomplicating things and adding too many steps to just making noise. Once I started mangling the recordings I pulled out of the ether with the Tracker the process got meditative and hypnotic. And because of the way that the Tracker works in phrases I would get lost in specific moments in the sound and then remember to "zoom out" and play the sound I was making in the greater context of the recording.
This series doesn't include any other samples, and I didn't do any treatment of the recordings in Ableton that I can recall. I think I tried out the mastering features in Soundcloud because I was curious and the stakes felt low. Over the course of a few days I managed to turn out a number of these tracks, and as much as I enjoyed it I haven't done anything similar since.