This is Chatter by CLAWED.

Chatter is another work that was created using DAR samples. For this piece I used a number of environmental sounds I recorded in downtown Toronto. I often take my recorder out with me on walks, just to see what sounds I run across in the city soundscape. I've found when I don't have my recorder on me or don't have it running, I'll often hear something and think, wow, that would be great in a piece! So I've found the best way to capture is to simply capture a LOT of material, then review it later and work with the bits I think have the most potential.

Chatter is meant to evoke an experience. I had an odd, ghostly experience at the Winston-Salem graveyard in North Carolina in the USA.

I've been to various graveyards before and never had anything  like this happen. Most graveyards seem really quiet, like parks with stone markers. :)

Winston-Salem did not seem that way at all to me. I heard voices. At first just a couple, but then LOTS, like a buzzing. I got a very quick onset migraine and asked to leave.

It was very odd. I could just explain it away as some kind of strange migraine aura, but I don't know. It felt weird. It felt like ghosts trying to talk, way too many of them...

That's the experience Chatter is trying to express. Ghostly voices, trying to talk.

The video is a visualization, so you'll notice the imagery is very reactive to the sound.

This is Enhydris Enhydris from the first CLAWED album.

It's made entirely of heavily manipulated and processed sound samples. I used samples from the Large Hadron Collider and recordings from my DAR (Digital Audio Recorder), mostly of a professional plumbing company snaking the drains in condo where I lived. :) Fun fact, there are no human voices in this piece!

The video is a visualization, so you'll notice the imagery is very reactive to the sound. I like the way it looks like waves in water and includes a spectrum of colors as that matches the themes in the song.

People often tell me my works sound "cinematic", like soundtracks to a movie they're not seeing & yes, I think the pieces do paint a picture. I often do have a specific scene or sequence in mind. For this piece, in my mind it's a fantasy/sci-fi scene of a strange rainbow water snake ritual (thus the name Enhydris Enhydris) being performed by monks in robes (human? alien? who knows, robes!) with metal singing bowls. :)

Oh, I should probably also say this piece intentionally has "healing frequencies" included in it. So if you're actually listening to the full resolution version with speakers than can reproduce the frequencies (20-20K Hz), then it can have an affect on the body. I'm particularly fond on the low "cat purr" frequencies which have been studied and apparently can help heal bones fractures!

Doing a web search, I found CLAWED Rob charted in June, July and August on WCBN.

#35 at the highest. I know we charted higher with The First Magic Number getting to #6 back in March 2014. Still it's nice to see the album charting. :)

Decoder Magazine reviewed CLAWED Rob!

My favourite quote: “Why Don’t You Understand” starts to approach Nurse With Wound territory, with a thick mist of reversed, juggled voices, progressively getting creepier and more haunting (and awesome).

:)

It's one of my favourite songs on the album. (Oh, there was a lot of ProTools work on that one.) I love to hear it described as haunting and awesome and being compared to Nurse with Wound is wonderful.

After some careful Google searching, I found that Julia at WNYU played "Introducing the Belltones" from the new album. That means another radio station discovered our music and I didn't send them a CD, so I have no idea how they found us.

KFJC has been playing CLAWED more too. Number 6, Surfer Rosa, Pants, Fox Populi, Eamon Devil Era and Avakhov have all played trackes from the new album now and many DJs played us more than once, featuring different tracks on different shows. Billie Joe Tolliver, Grawer, and SAL 9000 also played more songs from the new album. I checked and it looks like KFJC has played every song on the new album, except "Why Don't You Understand?"

It's great when you know it's not just one or two tracks people like. It's the whole album! :)

I turned on KFJC today and they were playing a song from the new album! Surprisingly, DJ Mance even chose the really long double-track, The Veil of Darkness | Prepare the Way.

I checked and we've had a bit of airplay on KFJC! Mance, Grawer, SAL 9000, and Billie Joe Tolliver have all played tracks from the new album.

Billie Joe also wrote an on-line review for the new album, CLAWED Rob, saying it's "Delicious like hard candy that breaks your teeth."

Awesome feedback!

All of the videos for the album are now up on YouTube, so you can watch the album on YouTube or just listen on Bandcamp. I hope you enjoy it!