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An IVCS only piece - Closely Observed Trains

edited March 2023 in Creations

“ I wrecked trains because I like to see people die. I like to hear them scream.” - 1930s mass murderer Szilveszter Matuschka

This family man and sometime-successful businessman came back from the carnage of the First World War a decorated hero, and might have passed into history unknown but for one thing he had discovered about himself.

Which was that he achieved his greatest sexual satisfaction watching people die in train wrecks, that he had engineered.

After two unsuccessful attempts, his third near Berlin resulted in 100 people injured. Then, at twenty minutes after midnight on September 13th 1931, his bomb blew the Vienna Budapest Express off the Biatorbagy Viaduct into the river seventy five feet below. 24 died, and over 100 were injured. Apprehended at the scene amid the dead, and reportedly alternately laughing and crying, his trousers were later found to be stained with the unavoidable evidence of his motive for the crime.

When questioned, he gave the notorious quote above, and at his trial blamed possession by a ghost for his actions, before adding that, should he be released, he would certainly wreck trains again. Sentenced initially to death, later commuted to life imprisonment, he disappeared from prison in the chaos of the closing stages of the Second World War. His fate remains unknown.

Having only recently realised that iVCS3 was now an AUV3, (and pleasingly low on resource usage at that), I set myself the challenge of creating a track using only it. This is the result: nine (!) instances of the app inside AUM on various fx and musical duties. No found sounds used, all noises are iVCS3 and effects only.

So: enjoy?

Comments

  • Very nice.

  • You really know how to tell a story, Irena, and this is a fascinating one. The piece is also excellent as usual.

    From the description, this line had me laughing out loud:

    Apprehended at the scene amid the dead, and reportedly alternately laughing and crying, his trousers were found to be stained with the unavoidable evidence of his motive for the crime.

    Please share some links to your longer pieces of writing, or dm me if you prefer!

  • That’s very good, indeed. Somehow WWl is far creepier for me than the next. It was the slow march, gas, mutilated soldiers with shell shock, horses and no man’s land, I think. WW2 had its own brand of horror but it was more modern, WWl rises out of the gas besotted mist like a ghost.

    Here’s my own WWl tribute, featuring my appropriately forlorn singing. I think you’ll like the story, Irena.
    I wrote the lyrics over an improvisation. It was not composed.

  • What can I say?

    Another masterwork.

  • @Svetlovska : great atmosphere!

  • Hmmmm… I am neither impressed or intimidated by this dude. I would put a .45 between his eyes and sleep like a baby. Just sayin.

  • What iPad do you have?

  • @cyberheater said:
    What iPad do you have?

    M1911.

  • Very intriguing, and quite cinematic.
    You are a very talented musical arranger, very knowledgeable in your craft!!!
    Dramatic and full of emotions.
    Thank you for this.

  • but there are no drums ?,,,,,,,kidding ! Very awesome ambience going there, great individual pieces melding together !! You have talent in your musical abilities and as others have said, in your writing skills. Well done

  • Always enjoy reading the backstory and inspiration for your tracks. Another great one! It’s inspiring me to dove more into iVCS as well. I knew it was AU but only recently realized it had a sampler player!

  • excellent use of ivcs3! Very very good

  • The first bass notes of that Dm/A bass line, despite its apparent simplicity set the fate of things to come. Interesting how that hypnotic pattern without the third creates a dissonant feel at first and and sense of unease later that eventually turns into full blown tension.

    Regular rhythm and base harmony, disjointed and fragmented shards of hi pitched elements, I actually couldn't help imagining a very deep Wurly playing something in Aeolian D mode.

    There is an underlying raw beauty in this piece and in the end all the tension accumulated in those 9 minutes just dissipates when the music fades out, and all that remains is an unnerving feeling of relief: it is over, but this is no end.

    Another haunting piece of art from @Svetlovska

  • Excellent! Listening for the second time in a row as it gave me a: train of thought 😉

    I like this idea of using one instrument/app and multiple copies thereof and often do it myself. There's no particular benefit to do so but ...

  • Amazing, and sinister. Would work well for a Matuschka documentary.

    When I read the description I thought it could've been a cover of Sylvestre Matuschka by LARD. I don't know if you're aware of that track? Industrial banger by Lard, which is basically Al Jourgensen of Ministry, with Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys:

    Then I listened to it, and the bass notes reminded me of Another Green World by Brian Eno (aka the Arena theme tune):

  • Good one. This is one of our very best iOS synths. I should use it more.

  • edited March 2023

    @Gavinski : a curious kind of masochism, but if you insist, I’ll dm you ;) Some of my fiction is out there in the world, as yer actual books, but under a different name from an earlier world I won’t be revisiting. Most of what I have written in the last few years has been delivered live at ‘fiction slam’ events, but sure, I can send you a couple of bits that I have done.

    @rottencat @espiegel123 : you are too kind (blushing)

    @LinearLineman : Superb! I really like this, lyrics too. Puts me in mind of Lotte Lenya and all that Brechtian sprechtgesang stuff, which I have long been a sucker for. And beautiful piano accompaniment, of course. I like the frailty and hesitancy in your vocal delivery. You should sing on more of your stuff. And write more lyrics!

    @cyberheater : Thank you! (Thinking of The Fast Show’s jazz critic now… )

    @ReneAsologuitar : Thank you, your words are always appreciated. :)

    @Syn: yeah, sorry about that. No drums… :)

    @HotStrange : yes, it’s both the most confusing and most inspiring synth app I have, I think. The adventure of making this led me to watching Hainbach and others messing with the Mk1 Syntrix, and then I checked the price of the sexy new Syntrix 2… tempting, but I have a couple of other big ticket items in my sights, so the app it is for the forseeable, lottery wins notwithstanding.

    @sevenape : thank you!

    @jo92346 : wow! Thank you. See, now that’s what separates me from the proper musicians here such as yourself. You knew that the bass line was Dm/A. I could never have known that without Scaler or A2M or something to tell me - or because I knew I had locked my midi apps to that when I started.

    Trouble is, I just don’t have the skills to go beyond the noises I start with, so I have to do what I can with arrangement of whole slabs of sound to make something which fakes the effect of something through-composed. I just don’t have the skills to otherwise extend out from a simple base, which must be painfully obvious to the actual musicians here. You won’t hear many clever chords, or modulations or whatever in my stuff. I do keep trying, but as Clint (almost) observed ‘ …a [person]’s gotta know their limitations.’ I watch Adam Nealy on YouTube and love it, though he might as well be speaking Swahili for all I understand what he is actually saying about chords and harmony and whatnot. A half century of trying to date, and no forward progress. Thank the Old Ones for the existence of Dark Ambient, then, a genre which doesn’t care. I’m just gonna keep telling myself what I’m doing is making ‘soundscapes’, I guess…

    @Pxlhg : Indeed! It is just for the challenge and fun of it, and iVCS is such a wayward stallion that riding it in isolation to a somewhat coherent conclusion without falling back on heavily ‘experimental’, 1960s bleeps and bloops felt like a whole other order of challenge. I think I need to try more of these one app experiments, it really helps push my understanding of the tricker ones I have.

    @pigdog237 : Ha! I’d never heard of that track, or of Lard, thanks for bringing it to my attention. I was a fan of The Dead Kennedys way back in their Holiday In Cambodia phase, so good to hear from Mr Biafra again. :smile:

    And the Arena theme tune was what first turned me on to Eno, so thank you for reminding me of it. I see what you mean!

    @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr : Thank you! Yes, we all should! :)

  • edited March 2023

    @Svetlovska said:
    “ I wrecked trains because I like to see people die. I like to hear them scream.” - 1930s mass murderer Szilveszter Matuschka

    This family man and sometime-successful businessman came back from the carnage of the First World War a decorated hero, and might have passed into history unknown but for one thing he had discovered about himself.

    Which was that he achieved his greatest sexual satisfaction watching people die in train wrecks, that he had engineered.

    After two unsuccessful attempts, his third near Berlin resulted in 100 people injured. Then, at twenty minutes after midnight on September 13th 1931, his bomb blew the Vienna Budapest Express off the Biatorbagy Viaduct into the river seventy five feet below. 24 died, and over 100 were injured. Apprehended at the scene amid the dead, and reportedly alternately laughing and crying, his trousers were later found to be stained with the unavoidable evidence of his motive for the crime.

    When questioned, he gave the notorious quote above, and at his trial blamed possession by a ghost for his actions, before adding that, should he be released, he would certainly wreck trains again. Sentenced initially to death, later commuted to life imprisonment, he disappeared from prison in the chaos of the closing stages of the Second World War. His fate remains unknown.

    Having only recently realised that iVCS3 was now an AUV3, (and pleasingly low on resource usage at that), I set myself the challenge of creating a track using only it. This is the result: nine (!) instances of the app inside AUM on various fx and musical duties. No found sounds used, all noises are iVCS3 and effects only.

    So: enjoy?

    Yay, it's always nice to read about famous fellow Hungarians! 😁

    Let me add two bits to his story.

    One, as a trained engineer he had several inventions registered to his name throughout his life. One of them was, and you couldn't make it up, some kind of signalling equipment that was supposed to warn engine drivers to distant obstacles or other sources of danger on the rail tracks... I guess they did not pick that one up in time 🤷

    Two, at the end of WW2, he was actually one of the few inmates who did NOT disappear from prison. He could have left but he remained, in the belief that his imprisonment and his knowledge of Serbian will make it easy for him to curry favour with the approaching Soviet army. He even successfully passed himself off as a surgeon (LOL, as he had zero medical training) and worked in the Red Army's field hospital while moving on with the troops. Later on, partisans somehow found him out and captured him, but his ultimate fate is indeed unknown.

  • ... and I forgot the most important part: very nice piece of work, Irene. Bonus points for the exquisite sex+train movie reference in the title. 👏

  • edited March 2023

    @ervin : Thank you for noticing that… ;)

  • A fascinating yet dark creation that illustrates a possible effect of post traumatic stress disorder linked to a deranged mind. Interesting backstory too!

  • Rather lovely that! Sorry to say it piqued the curiosity of the kitten too, she was trying to bite/burrow into the speakers to get to whatever she imagined was in there… you should be awarded a real, or even clone of a VCS for your services to synthhood…

  • @AlterEgo_UK : thank you! :) @Krupa : I love the mental image of your little kitty trying to burrow into the speakers. I’m sensing a new marketing angle : ‘Cthonicism - it’s aural catnip!’ :)

  • Disturbing story, mesmerising music, great combination 👌

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