I've been doing some sound design for a multi platform interactive game, and this week it went 'live' at a 3 day conference in Brighton. The theme of the game itself is science fiction with technology at the forefront (particularly the early home computing period of the '80s). Part of my brief for this event was to produce a cover of the Robert Wyatt song, Lullaby for Hamza (actually the cover was closer to the Unthanks version). The song formed the climax of a performance/puzzle element, representing the unlocking of a message from a lost team.
I put my Prophet 600 poly synth to good use on the wash of pads, running various layers of it through Eventide Space, Roland RE-201 Space Echo and for added disorientation, the ZVEX Instant Lo-fi Junky. The synth solo was a mix of Moog Voyager via ZVEX Fuzz Factory, and the fantastic Aalto plugin running through voice resynthesis plugin Bit Speek. I spent a lot of time treating the vocals (Becky Randall of black channels - more on that later) to give the feeling that we were hearing a transmission from far way with all the interference and drop outs you would expect. Multiple takes were run through Space Echo, Buchla 200e and bit reduction plugins. Drones and effects were supplied by the Buchla 200e's 'Twisted Waveform Generator'.
Keep ears peeled for a full black channels cover.......