:fzz:ep: by x09

After the Orbitrecords partners Wes, Sami, and I realized Induction was probably not going to record any more music together for a while, we wanted a way to keep the label going. I had somehow managed to land a cheap TR-808 and a cheap TR-909, the mainstay drum machines of techno at the time. However, at my own meager studio I didn’t have any way to record at a professional level, since all I had was cassette whereas professionals were using reel to reel recorders or digital audio tape. Forget about recording into your computer! Our trusty Mackie CR-1604 was no longer sufficient to get the sound we wanted too, since for every channel the EQ bands were at a fixed frequency.

I was struggling through college at Carnegie-Mellon University, and I managed to get connected to the computer music lab led by Roger Dannenberg, one of the leading researchers in computer music. Most of his students were graduate students, but I carried a lot of enthusiasm along with me to pitch him to be part of his group. In high school I had imagined a software product a lot like what we now have with Ableton Live and Cubase, though with the technology of 1994 I thought it all had to be computed offline. Roger blew my mind when he asked, “why not do it all in real time?” He had, in fact, made a software product that afforded exactly that.

My academics weren’t strong, but they trusted me enough to give me a key to the computer music lab. My job was to make sounds for the NYQUIST real time computer music library. I labored in that lab with computers that were way more powerful than anything I had used before, like the IBM RS/6000 workstations and the NeXT cubes. I was poking around with these systems, collaborating lightly with people who published in the elevated academic publication Computer Music Journal. I remember finding an issue of this journal at a B.Dalton bookseller in my local mall, bringing it home, and flipping through it. Since I was only 15 years old, I had absolutely no idea what I was reading, but it sounded amazing to me.

Though I was working ostensibly with this computer music research group, mostly in isolation, the access to that lab afforded me something I had never had before. They had a Mackie 16-channel 8-buss mixer in there which had parametric equalizers, and they also had two Yamaha SPX-90 effect processors. They had a digital audio tape recorder, which at the time was essential to get professional quality recordings from your mix.

One weekend, I decided to fill up my backpack with my rhythm machines and record in that studio. I stuffed my Roland boxes into my backpack and held one on my arm: the TR-808, TR-909, and TR-727. I had also grown accustomed to using my DOD Supra-Distortion guitar pedal, so I brought that, too.

I don’t remember how long I spent in that room, but through the night hours I recorded three of the four tracks on the x09 :fzz:ep: -- Nuclear, Fireball, and Flickerflash. These three songs were done completely live, playing the sequencers on the rhythm boxes and the Mackie mixer in real time. All of my previous work including the Induction songs were composed using a computer. This was a new way of working for me, performing live on the instruments, which was more akin to what I thought the Detroit and Chicago producers were doing at the time.

What came out was an abrasive, experimental set of tracks. Flickerflash was probably the most accessible, while Nuclear and Fireball were 10-minute-plus workouts. In fact, Fireball was recorded using only the TR-808 and the DOD pedal.

I needed one more song to round out the EP, so I recorded the song Statika last in my college bedroom. That one used all the Roland rhythm machines but put them together with samples of my Sequential Pro-One, all driven by the computer and sampled into my E-mu Emulator II.

Now that the tracks were done, we were ready to hit the record press again. I was fascinated by dubplates at the time, the acetate cuts that would only last a few plays. In my local record stores, I had a sense that DJs loved to pour over the 12” records that were just in a paper sleeve with no jacket. The original Bass Bin Twins records came that way, and they were monsters.

Conferring with Sami and Wes, we decided to press a small number of records, only 200, as a pre-release, giving them to DJs and reviewers before the release was to hit. Unfortunately, this also was a bad idea. I didn’t realize that once the record was pressed and out, the hype would be gone, and the window of attention we had on it would lapse rapidly. So we did press those 200 records, black 12” vinyl with a paper sleeve and no jacket, and some of those went to our friends at Watts Music.

The x09 record turned out to be my first solo release, and to this day it’s definitely the weirdest. We got a great review of the song “Nuclear,” and the reviewer said he loved it at 45 RPM whereas it was recorded at 33. Another reviewer from the Pacific Northwest blasted it in Resonance Magazine, or so it appeared to us. We had purchased ad space for our previous single Halodust in that edition of Resonance, so to get a pan review felt like a sting. I remember being a jerk about it to the reviewer, but once I finally moved to Seattle and met him I learned he was an amazing DJ and a sweet guy as well. I had a lot of hubris when I was young, and I have definitely learned from it.

In the aftermath of that defeat, this record has gained a cult following. I get messages on social and email semi-frequently asking for files or vinyl of this record. We noticed on Discogs.com that it had sold for $85 at least once. If you’re looking for a hard, abrasive, noisy workout of drum machines, this thing is for you.

Equipment used on this record: Roland TR-808, Roland TR-909, Roland TR-727, DOD Supra Distortion, Sequential Pro-One, E-mu Emulator II, Mackie 8-buss mixer, Yamaha SPX-90

x09 is an experimental project based on raw rhythms and exploring studio techniques.

The project began one night in 1995 when Tom Butcher lugged his 808, 909, and 727 to his college's computer music studio.

That night culminated with the recording of most of the :fzz:ep:.

The ill-fated record flopped in the market but gained a cult following years later.