In early 2021, “Looking From a Hallway at a Table and a Light” was released as part of a digital compilation on the Ukrainian label 1000xxplace (or Thousand Kisses Place). How this slowed down, drumfunk track, with one recognizable breakbeat, uplifting pads, and city field recordings developed was worth sharing.
Hidden Element
1000xxplace is managed by the musical group Hidden Element and more precisely, Igor from Hidden Element.
Hidden Element has been featured on Pinecone Moonshine since 2012. At the time, Hidden Element (who was Igor and Nil) reached out via AIM about sending demo tracks. Collaborating with the live drummer, Liquid Break, the tracks had a different energy. These tracks eventually formed the Drum and Bass EP “Pop Musiq” which was released in 2013.
Since then, Hidden Element has kept in contact. We first met up in person in San Francisco while Hidden Element was on tour with the Ukrainian band The Erised (which was signed on Hospital Record’s Med School). And I met with Igor a few more times during his stay in Los Angeles.
This established a connection and I was pleased when I was asked do something for 1000xxplace.
Finding the Concept
Igor asked me if I would contributed to the compilation on 1000xxplace around November of 2020. At first, I doubted that I had time, or it would be too rushed to finish by the deadline, but then I wrapped up a larger project a couple weeks early.
Having finished a more abstract project, I wasn’t sure what would be next. Thinking about the deadline, I started feeling like going back to my typical drumfunk approach: one break, some ambients, and a slow moving harmony. Structured tracks like this go a bit faster for me.
I thought about the audience. I knew two other musicians which would be on the comp and their sound was more synth heavy electronic. So I wanted my track to showcase the drumfunk sound in an approachable way (less of the free-form, meandering progression, or sample soup that I might make for PCMS).
I still needed a concept and some sort of inspiration. I listened through the previous releases on 1000xxplace and was drawn to the track Kontinuum. It reminded me of dub techno and I liked the intro tone and the sparse effects.
The concept became “make a drumfunk remix of Kontinuum.” With a clear direction, I started rebuilding some the sounds from my own samples and field recordings. And once I had started, I found the other unique elements like the harmony.
A Slower Tempo
Since the comp was mostly non-Drum and Bass, I didn’t feel pressured to stay in the 160-175 bpm range. I ended up only straying a bit off that at 158 bpm. The main breakbeat was one that I had tried using in other Drum and Bass tracks, but it never flowed quite right. But at the slower tempo, I came up with two patterns to alternate with for the progression of the track.
Also what helped the drums not sound rushed, is that I cut/quantized around the rides instead of the snares. So previous attempts at using the sample had caused the rides to get off beat and therefore the whole drum pattern to sound unnatural.
The Title
While I was wrapping up the track, I had a flashback to my childhood house in El Paso, Texas. The house in El Paso was wrapped around an atrium, and my bedroom was at the end of a hallway detached from the rest of the rooms. Sometimes we would set up a card table in the atrium which I could see from my bedroom through a cutout in the hallway wall.
When I listen to different tones and timbres in music, I automatically start to associate these to colors. When this image from the hallway came to mind, it was nighttime and uncharacteristically dark as if the scene was drawn by cross hatching. The black of the cross hatching and contrast of light matched the “colors” I saw when listening to the finished track.
“Looking From a Hallway at a Table and a Light” was the first thing I wrote down for title ideas. I spent a few minutes trying to brainstorm something more succinct, but that first instinct stuck.
At 13 syllables, the title is a longer than average, but that is okay. It is still quite far off Relapse's 31 syllable "Two Worlds Colliding With a Force More Horrifying and Beautiful Than Can Be Adequately Quantified in the Time Needed."
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Computing and Recording 