Rotation 2: moto-SLAVE

Well, it was bound to happen...the artist we originally had scheduled for February needed some more time and is being pushed back a few months. Luckily, I was planning on doing a Rotation myself at some point anyway, so I will be filling in and helming Rotation #2.

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Producing for many years as Cats On Earth, Dr. Science and Nova Satori (among many other aliases) I decided to delve into my latest project - moto-SLAVE - in late 2009. At that point in time it’d been 4 years since my last Cats On Earth album ("La Fin Triste" for binkcrsh) and I was having a hard time trying to figure out where to go from there. After that break in producing trying to pick up where I’d left off felt really forced, so I decided I wanted to start from scratch and go back to the days when I didn’t really know what the fuck I was doing, just experimenting and having fun. My interests had been steadily moving away from IDM-ish stuff and more towards the vintage sounds of electro-funk, glam-rock, acid and that period in the late 70s-early 80s when disco was evolving into house music with artists like Larry Levan, Patrick Cowley and of course the Italo and hi-NRG stuff.

So I started working with a stripped down setup of old-school drum machines and vintage synthesizers, taking a lo-fi approach and making tunes that evoked the types of things I was most interested in. Influenced by cyberpunk, anime, John Carpenter movies (and soundtracks), retro-futurism and the storytelling elements of 70s-era glam and prog rock, the moto-SLAVE sound started to define itself with fuzzy electronics, urban field recordings, drum machines, acid squelches, ambient pads and digital blips, all doused in reverbs, delays and tube saturation.

During 2010 I released my first album as moto-SLAVE called “Midnight Mass” and then a follow up EP titled “Colors” and am currently toiling away at another EP as we speak, which I hope to detail a bit throughout my rotation.

But moto-SLAVE isn't just a musical endeavor - all the sounds I produce, the lyrics, artwork and atmosphere of the tracks are supplemental to a larger creative world I’ve been crafting that is further detailed in an ongoing near-future sci-fi story, also called "Midnight Mass". Recurring themes of urban decay, exploitation, drug abuse, political and corporate corruption, radicalist hacking, technological escapism and fetishism flow through both the music and the writing, coming together to create what I hope is a multi-faceted portrait of a city divided by class, idealism and apathy. I probably wont delve too much into the writing/story aspect of the project here, but if you’re interested you can read the first 4 chapters on the Midnight Mass Blog, which I update and add to with each subsequent release.

Over the course of February I’ll be touring you all through my little ghetto fabulous studio Super Dimension, showing you how I work, doing a few tutorials of my gear, previewing my new live set and whatever else happens to come to my mind at the time, so stay tuned and feel free to drop me a line in the comments section if you have any questions.