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[THANKS]

Jade for putting up with all the late nights and the shite that I be talking all the time.
Cris and all the Laser Highway crew for being so welcoming and giving me a place to bring my daft ideas to life.
Sean and Mitch for their vocal contributions.
Jovan for his help with the credits and all things video.
Damo and Paul at SEQ ARP for their support and help with the project.
Cormac for forcing me to get off my arse and do some actual promo work for once in my life.
If you bought the album or came to the show... you can have one of these thanks too. As a treat.

Lastly, this one goes out to the lads. Hardcore you know the score.

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[THE LONG STORY]

Where to start? I've always been interested in movie scores and the idea of rescoring movies with new music. Hell, I even invented game called Bambutokoh that was all based around who could pick the best song to accompany a particularly intense YouTube video of some Butoh theatre...

Wait, I'm getting sidetracked. You want to hear about the live score.

So, this whole idea came about thanks to being invited to play for Laser Highway's Halloween stream 2021. This was my second year of rescoring a movie for Cris and the LH crew having rescored Dawn of The Dead previously. This time around I fancied having a crack at the classic 80s Sci-Fi/Horror/Actioner Aliens. A movie very near and dear to me having seen it countless times on VHS as a kid.

Having learned from the previous year, I gave myself a reasonable amount of time to write and rehearse (14 days instead of 9). This included editing the movie down from the extended run time of 1 hour 57 down to 82 minutes though (including credits) which was probably the hardest part of the process. I would stay awake deep into the night slashing scenes that any semblance of pacing or dialogue. Exposition? BEGONE! Touching drama? NOT ON MY WATCH! Hacking and discarding anything that wouldn’t be suitable for the ninety minutes of chunky synth heavy tracks I had planned. The movie began to make sense in more of an impressionist manner now. Sort of a notion of a movie. I actually went bananas one night with the cuts and didn't realise until the very end that I now had a movie that was only 80 minutes. Not to worry. Over-enthusiastically edit we may, synth we must.

With the movie finally edited down and my nerves already on edge, I set about coming up with ideas for each scene. Labouring over notepads with a fat sharpie in hand scrawling down tempos and descriptions of what I would write as I watched and rewatched and watched again the same movie over and over. Terms began spilling onto the page like xeno-doom, drop-ship shuffle, hard-sync heavy marine funk, and facehugger blood rave. Each character or faction being given their own synthesized signature. My partner no doubt cowering in fear as my demented babbling filled the halls.

"The 303... acid... yes... acid for blood...YESSSS! THE ALIENS ARE THE 303!"

"Marines... in their hard shells like angry warrior skittles... in synchronisation... hard-sync... THE JV2080 HARD SYNC SOUNDS! THAT'S IT I'VE CRACKED IT LIKE THEIR LITTLE SKITTLE SHELLS!!!"

Over the remaining days I wrote and wrote deep into the night. A painstaking process of keeping notes of what machines needed to play what parts and when. Referencing decades old Japanese synth manuals and keying in absurd combinations of numbers to "STOP THAT FUCKING FLUGELHORN COMING IN AT THE WRONG TIME". Mistakenly deleting patterns and patches, losing notes and my mind all at once. I was unravelling. A mess. Subsiding on a mixture of bargain bucket red wine and skittles that I called Vasquez War Punch. Most nights I would fall asleep in a pile of broken audio cables, convinced that the beeping of a monosynth was a deep space beacon and I was in stasis. Slowly drifting across the galaxy waiting to be rescued. I was one with the universe and yet not really there at all.

Wow. You really read this far? Fair enough. Read on!

Time was running out. The writing was all wrapped up and I had rehearsed each individual piece a couple of times but I still needed to record the fucking thing. After the previous year’s debacle I knew I wasn’t going to attempt anything “live”. Don't ask what happened the previous year. I won't tell you. Not even if you offer to buy me a good whiskey. They have 25 year old Nikka whiskey? Okay, pull up a chair and we'll talk about it.

I knew I wanted the recording to be as live as possible. Stubborn fool that I am, I decided there would be no cuts, no do-overs for tricky parts, no studio magic, no hair and no makeup… I wanted to capture it all live in one go in one take. I was determined. I set up my little movie studio with a makeshift green screen made from a green linen blanket (Jade will pipe in now to correct me that it was actually fox nostril or salamander or some other colour I can't see), set up some lighting, a couple of cams, got everything recording and ready to go and then… I froze up.

I couldn’t bring myself to record it. I kept finding small things that were wrong or not working. The fucking flugelhorn came back. Synths were going out of une. I was panicking. I had already pushed the deadline as far as it could go. Sweat oozed from my pores. Fat dirty beads of flop sweat. I began thinking about 2020. Visions of cancelling the gig filled my mind. I was sitting in the garden chain smoking cigarettes and muttering to myself like a crazy person. I was running out of time and more importantly I was on my last bottle of VWP. "Get a grip of yourself, man" I told myself. "What would Hudson do?". A smile darted across my lips which were by now the colour of the dried remnants at the bottom of a tropical punch bowl.

"Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen" I muttered to myself. “And even if you fuck this up nobody will know and you can just record it again… its not a big deal”.

83 minutes later as I pressed stop on the recording I realise that I had done it. Without having rehearsed the rescore from start to finish I had just nailed it in one take on the first go. The energy left my body. With my last ounce of strength I managed to send the file to Cris at Laser Highway. I was found three days later wandering barefoot in a garden babbling about LV-426. The stains from the war punch that covered my body prompted the home owners to contact the police. When I explained I had completed an entire live score in one take they didn't believe me. The far-fetched nature of what I had achieved earned me a face full of pepper spray and a lift home.

The fuck am I talking about?


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[RIG RUNDOWN]

Elektron Octatrack: Performance sampler that ran all of the MIDI and clock for all machines as well as having some samples that were needed to add extra atmosphere or heft. It's a MKI Octatrack so it has that real vintage 2011 sound you just can't get these days.

Behringer K2: This covers a lot of the detuned sounding but still staccato bass parts heard throughout. The K2 and the JU06 are both used featured heavily in scenes where the focus is on Ripley such as the rescue of Newt and their escape from LV426. You gonna hate on Behringer? So original.

Roland JU06: The little boutique that keeps on giving. This was used for pads, arpeggiated leads and some wet yet metallic sounds during the facehugger bloodrave track. At one stage, I was hoping this thing would be worth enough for me to retire on. But OHHHH NOOOOO... Roland just HAD to make a better version. I feel bad for that guy who cashed in all of his super to buy as many JU06 units as he could. Whenever I see him I tell him. "I feel bad for you, buddy", I say, staring into the mirror with tears in my eyes reflecting the blinking lights from a room full of Roland boutique synths.

Elektron Machinedrum: Pretty much all drum sounds throughout. What more do you want? It's a drum machine. It doesn't have a cool story.

Behringer TD3: All 303 acid bass sounds. Used prominently in earlier scenes to represent the xenomorphs. Heaviest use is in the lab scene with Newt and Ripley against the facehugger. Could I have come up with a better name than Hugs & Kisses for this track? Probably. Maybe it's just a clever way of letting people know I want a plush toy of a face hugger? Let's see if it pays off.

Roland Alpha Juno 2 & Retroaktiv MPG50: Classic Roland synth of the 90s hardcore and jungle era that covers rave-inspired bass and some of the string-style synth sounds towards the end of the movie. The MPG50 is the controller for it which sits in amongst the other gear. Juno make hoovers. Goes pweeow. Pweeow sound good.

Korg ARP Odyssey – This was used for a lot of the biting and plucky lead sounds. One of my favourite bits of gear. Love it. The guy who I bought it off was like "yeah I'll give you the case as well". The case was the shittest bit of weak ass luggage I've ever seen with broken buckles and filled with the worst mattress foam bullshit. It's a fucking shit show and I still have it. Just looking at it makes me sad. It's the saddest luggage that has ever existed.

Roland JV2080: 90s Roland digital synth that works in this set as a sort "does everything box" since it was suited to handling a multitude of sounds that the other gear couldn’t manage. Used prominently for the space marine theme of heavy hard-synced bass. This is heard mostly in the landing and exploration scene and also when the power cuts for the big battle between the xenomorphs and marines. It's basically just a bunch of presets in a horribly oversized box and my way of sticking to the stubborn "dawless jam" approach to this entire gig. Sure, you can program it. If you like editing hundreds of parameters on a five inch wide screen with one rotary encoder. Luckily enough I don't mind it. I'm surprised I can still see at this stage.

Soundcraft EFX12: If the Octatrack was the brains of the set then this was the brawn. The builds and transitions of this set were all pretty much managed through using the mixer to essentially dub mix everything as it played. It also just makes you look about 75% cooler pushing faders around like you're a big shot. Shit half the time even I don't know what I'm doing. Reach for the stars and when you grab one just pretend like you know what you're doing.

Roland SRV-2000: Reverb unit from the 90s used across everything to smear transitions. Legend has it this one is the same one that was used on the first Savage Garden album. I shit you not.

ART PRO VLA II – Dirty tube levelling amplifier that kept all the levels in check and gave everything some crunch. This thing is so fucked. With the dials in certain positions it puts out a horrible squealing sound and I have no idea what causes it.

Elektron Analog Heat – Delivering some extra crunch before everything got recorded into the laptop.

Thus concludes the gear list.

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Vasquez War Punch Recipe

1 x box / bag of Pinot Noir (cheapest you can find)
2 x share size bags of skittles
1 x bottle of Bacardi 151

Shell the skittles. This may take some time but it is an important step as it will allow you to focus your mind in preparation for the difficult task of drinking the War Punch. Reserve the Skittle nuts.

Decant the wine into a large non-reactive bowl. You can choose to add some MSG to the wine if you prefer your punch with a little more umami.

In a mortar and pestle, crush the skittle shells as finely as possible. Some clumping may occur. If clumping is an issue for you, feel free to use some corn starch to prevent clumping but if doing so you will need to follow the recipe for Mulled War Punch from step 7 onwards.

Add your finely crushed skittle shells to the bowl of wine. Leave the shells to infuse your wine overnight. Covering the bowl is advised as an uncovered bowl of War Punch is a surefire way of getting more ants into your system than you are presumably able to handle. You can choose to skip covering the bowl and strain the ants before drinking however you may still end up with some antennae. Again, if this is not a concern for you feel free to skip this step. A coffee filter or a double layer of muslin set over a sieve can be used to trap most antennae and they make for a striking garnish when used to line the rim of a glass of War Punch.

After infusing for 24 hours, taste the punch. You are aiming for a balanced sweetness and tartness in the drink. If you find it has leaned too far in one direction adjust it using either more wine or bump up the sweetness using a 2:1 simple syrup made of demerara sugar and Evian.

Take the reserved skittle nuts, place them in a glass bowl, and microwave them for 5-10 seconds. Remove the bowl and check their malleability. Continue this process until the nuts have the tacky but pliable consistency of warm taffy. Be careful not to overheat the nuts as their oils will release and their beguiling fragrance will be lost. Once they reach the point that you can mould them by hand into a single mass you can begin to craft the drinking vessels.

Take a double thumb sized piece of the skittle nut dough and roll it out into a rectangle shape. Allow to cool slightly. While it cools, take a second thumb sized piece of the dough and create a disc of about a 1" diameter. This will form the base of the vessel. Take the slightly cooled rectangle of dough and trim the edges if necessary to make it a tight 2" x 3.5" rectangle. Shape this into a cylinder to sit on top of the coin. The long neck of an immersion blender is useful for this part of the process. Use some of the wine to moisten the bottom of the tube and attach it to the coin. Your finished vessel should be roughly the same shape and size as an M40 grenade but hollow.

If you reserved your antennae, you can use them to line the rim of the drinking vessel now. They add a striking flare (pun intended) to the vessel but also bring some texture to the drink.

Fill your vessel with Vasquez War Punch, leaving some space for the float. Using a bar spoon, float Bacardi 151 on top of the drink. Lighting this drink on fire is not advised as the sugar can melt and cause some rather painful burns. If you are after a more authentic Aliens experience that includes acid burns you can choose to light it at your own discretion. However, the author assumes no responsibility for the consequences of your actions.

This drink must be consumed within around 10 seconds otherwise the sugar will begin to melt and the vessel will leak. The preferred method of consumption is as a single shot either pre-empted by saying "You always were an asshole, Gorman" or followed by roaring "Let's Rock!" and making smartgun noises. It is customary to throw the shell over your left shoulder after drinking for luck.

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[THE END]




















... OR IS IT?

















IT IS.