April 5, 2019
Hip Dozer
Taking inspiration from 70's Sci-Fi, Isaac Asimov novels, and the 60's space race, Astro Livin EP was based around a loose narrative of space exploration, the Earth's life, and past visions of the future, hence the opening title 'Windows On The Past'. "Combining the crunchy 12 bit power of the AKAI S950, the advanced sequencing of the MPC 2000, and the grit of the SP-303 - I aimed to create an EP which not only sounded retro but was also forward thinking. Having being stuck in a bit of a rut with music for a couple of months, I took a look back at my beginnings as an artist and decided to produce a release echoing the format of my first tapes - 'half short but twice strong' beats interwoven with dialogue and skits to create an uninterrupted listening experience beckoning back to the heyday of the album. All of the melodic samples were carefully curated from an extensive collection of 60's and 70's vinyl, aiming to dig deeper in the crates than I had done on any previous release. The sound effects were sampled direct from my dusty old SEGA Megadrive, and the drums from my seemingly endless piles of floppy disks. The one exception to this was on the closing track 'Higher Vibrations', in which the keys and bass are sampled from a live session I recorded with Felix Taylor FKA 'Dank Lotion' on the Yamaha DX7 Synthesiser. The artwork was handled by nic_supa, whose style of analogue collage mirrored the scrapbook like methods utilised in the music's creation. "