Having set out a few goals and identified early influences and previous attempts it’s time for some actual work. What is the basis of hauntiki sound? It’s easy to name check and call out influences – but that’s a inventory, not creation. Leave that for the musicologists.

First look is rather vague

I’ve gone through my lounge music library and identified some interesting and unsettling moments which I’ve converted into the spectral realm. Spectral samples can be bent and stretched to form surreal hybrids. Take a spoonful of Martin Denny and stretch it like putty – if overdone you get ambiguous smear that could be from anywhere really, so the trick is in gentle persuasion. A loop can be tuned to a sinister scale or re-timed to follow a new pacing.

On the other side you get the techniques of hauntology, which is more of a frequency domain thing. Small speakers and large ballrooms. Hiss and crackle and grey telephones. It’s tempting to dive into radiophonic nostalgia but you are in danger of drowning in cliches. I’m listening to an alleged instigator The Caretaker and wondering if this is a technique rather than a composition. Also wondering – if you are going to draw from music that draws from a film, then why not go direct to the film?

It also helps to play down the importance of the British flavour of Hauntology – all ballrooms and telephone speakers – and to remember that early Detroit Techno was also a lamentation of future lost. It frees you from a lot of wistful cliches. The futuristic soundtrack of America is in no way a lament for old telephones.

It’s curious that the soundtrack for the TV show Lost – which packs in every lost island cliche you could wish for – falling aircraft, spy radio beacons, underground bunkers, palm trees etc. has a traditional score. My guess is we’re examining the interior of the protagonists rather than the interior of the island and that needs melody.

Right now I’m trying the process I use when scoring for a film or game: protagonist, antagonist, somewhere, conflict, win/lose blah blah.

Second Look is getting closer to a thing

Nothing like just running a rhumba… so much of this supposed style comes from the percussion. The moment you get in a rhumba or a cha cha or beguine (obviously I know very little about this kind of beat) running under your explorations it takes on two interesting connections – the cheesy sound of the old drum machines vaguely attempting to be a real percussion group – and the early days of popular electronic music which had picked up a drum machine in a thrift shop and used it under some ‘industrial’ ditty. Think SPK Information Overload Unit – think Suicide (especially Diamonds, Fur Coat, Champagne). The old drum machine is both Martin Denny and Throbbing Gristle.

How could I have forgotten this guy who was under everything on my album Clean.

Third look – is ‘industrial’ a Brazilian samba?

So why do drum machines come with so many ‘Latin’ beats? The first electronic machine was the 1964 Seeburg Rhythm Prince. shown above. They supported the home organs of the time.

I’ve read Graeme Revell saying of the album Information Overload Unit – “The rhythms were from a Latin American drum machine processed through guitar pedals and re-recorded post PA speakers”. There’s another quote about that being imposed by the equipment available.

You can get more information here – but let’s just say that the drum machine was a home entertainment device disfigured by the musicians of the time. That is … not a Linn Drum.