Wax Revolution 9

The similarity to this Wax Cylinder project track’s title with The Beatles famed “Revolution 9” is, of course, entirely deliberate.

I was interested in sampling some of the pops and clicks on some of these old wax cylinder recordings and seeing if they could be incorporated into a kind of glitchy beat. These imperfections are what make these old wax cylinder recordings especially strange in the modern digital era. With the wax cylinder, as with vinyl, the aging process (physical damage, mould, etc) actually changes the sounds of the music much in the same way that lines on a face might denote a person’s advancing years.

In the process of finding a series of these crackles and clicks which could be worked into a 3/4 time signature, I found a sample repeating the words “nine”. The neat waltz time signature and the word association with The Beatles track from the White Album was too good to pass over.

“You say you want a cylinder revolution…” – John and Yoko at the Bed-In for Peace. Eric Koch / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The sample itself was taken from another of the many ICS language records I mentioned in my last post, freely available on the internet. Avoiding the temptation of adding any Lennon and Yoko avant-garde style sound collage to the beat, I simply picked up my Squier Stratocaster and, with a wash of reverb, started to improvise.

I was quite pleased with the atmosphere which was subsequently created, being something slightly mournful and eerie, yet at the same time relaxed and languid enough to counterpose the doggedly insistent phrase “nine…nine…nine…”, which chants incessantly to the beat throughout in a kind of dour waltz.

Possibly one of the old vinyl records sampled for our music back in the early 1990s. I hear that “Fake Bell Sounds” did not sell nearly as well…

I mentioned in a previous post how my bandmate Pete would, back in the very early 1990s, sample plummy-sounding and polite British voices from old 78s, 33s and 45s to mix into our music. I think this was on my mind when I sourced the sample “No madam, we do not!” on another of those ICS language recordings. Within this phrase there is a formal politeness but with a hint of bawdy Carry On film outrage about it, residing in the comic traditions of music hall (most appropriate given the origins of my artist name – Carnoe’s Mummingbirds).

“Debbie”, my Strat.

Wax Revolution 9 and its glitching waltz beat is the very first track on the album.

The full album will be available on the Bandcamp page –

https://carnoesmummingbirds.bandcamp.com