Surachai

Abigail Williams – Walk Beyond The Dark

Alessandro Cortini – Volume Massimo

Anthony Baldino – Twelve Twenty Two

Apparat – LP5

August Eve – Ashes In A Vase

Barker – Utility

Belief Defect – Remixed 1

Billie Eilish – When We All…

Bobby Krlic – Midsommar

Chelsea Wolfe – Birth of Violence

Daniel Wohl – État

Datassette – Kestrel Manoeuvres In The Dark

Deathspell Omega – The Furnaces of Palingenesia

Deaf Center – Low Distance

EDM – EDM L

False – Portent

The Great Old Ones – Cosmicism

Grischa Lichtenberger – Re: Phgrp

Hania Rani – Esja

Hildur Guðnadóttir – Chernobyl

Homemade Weapons – Gravity

Inus – Western Spaghettification

Ioanna Gika – Thalassa

Ivy Lab – Stars

James Shinra – Vital Heat

Karen O & Danger Mouse – Lux Prima

Lanark Artefax – Corra Linn

Lorn – Drown The Traitor Within

Marika Hackman – Any Human Friend / Acoustic

Michael Kiwanuka – Kiwanuka

Nusquama – Horizon Ontheemt

Polyfuse – Does Not Work

Sel’m – Kreise

Sudan Archives – Athena

Telefon Tel Aviv – Dreams Are Not Enough

Valance Drakes – An Angel In Alliance With Falsehood

Verwoed – De Val

Vukari – Aevum

Waste of Space Orchestra – Syntheosis

Yellow Eyes – Rare Field Ceiling

It is always a guess, an experiment and an art to try to capture a glimpse of it. All the equipment, time and obsession is an attempt to translate and capture an emotion I can come back to and evoke. The production and release of Asymmetry Codex and Temple of the Weakening Sun was a way to process then archive several versions of loss – it has served its purpose with me – I hope it can somehow find a way to serve you.

The album was released a week early on Bandcamp, Friday September 22, the autumn equinox, because there are actually no rules to this and we’re flexible to do what feels right. Streaming services will activate September 29th and vinyl will begin shipping early/mid November. All Wax Mage Editions and Test Pressing Editions have sold out, Standard Editions are in stock and everything will ship early/mid November. Every record, shirt, and piece of merch has been shipped personally, I’ve read every e-mail and note you’ve sent, and know many of you by name from the orders. Thank you for supporting a challenging artist to follow and keeping me busy with something I love doing.

Alessandro Cortini, Richard Devine, Hypoxia, and Surachai will be playing in at Berghain in Berlin, October 5th. More shows and announcements coming soon. Hope to see you around.

Recording
The centerpiece of Asymmetry Codex is the Nord Modular G2. I acquired the G2 five years ago and was seduced by its clarity, dynamics, and general smooth sonics. For months I found distinct sounds that I could pinpoint to some of my favorite albums, though most of the time was spent scanning and dissecting several hundred patches that Richard bestowed upon me. I made dozens of terrible patches and while I admired the G2 and was happy to have it, I knew it wasn’t something I was ready for at that very moment and so, for the next few years, I loaned it out to people. In those years, I released albums that focused around the modular synthesizer and various hardware pieces, and became increasingly aware of how saturated the modular scene was becoming. I made a conscious decision to move away from my hardware modular trajectory and to finally become acquainted and focused on the Nord Modular G2. After a lot of studying and programming dozens of patches between a few songs, I recorded the G2 into the Thermionic Culture Vulture Super 15 and that fed into a RME UFX. Aside from the recording signal chain, Asymmetry Codex is mostly digitally composed and Temple of the Weakening Sun was created with analog tools.

Arrangement & Mixing
After all the patterns and stems were recorded to audio, I arranged them into Pro Tools. All of the editing was done with dozens of plug-ins including: Valhalla DSP, INA-GRM, Sound Toys, Izotope, Soundhack, UAD and a few Richard told me to keep under wraps. I recorded and mixed the album using a pair of headphones that I was not familiar with which is a direct result of the heavy bass – something I normally wouldn’t have done but have grown to love. I have to thank Josh Eustis, Deru, Richard Devine, and John Hughes for guidance and advice and insight into my own mixes.

Mastering
Shawn Hatfield of Audible Oddities helped me tame these two projects into one cohesive experience. My mixes weren’t in the best form and we worked together to get the album to sound as rich as it could.

“We approached the mastering a little differently for Asymmetry Codex / Temple of the Weakening Sun, as the first set of mixes I mastered ended up shedding some light on an unintended overall aesthetic in the mix that was much too bright. Rather than apply heavy processing to reverse that, Surachai went back to the mix and returned with a new set of files. From there, the process began in typical fashion with gear selection and careful gain staging. I experimented with several different pieces of equipment and order, and eventually chose a mostly tube-based setup for this record. The main pieces were a Knif Vari-Mu II compressor, Hendyamps Michelangelo EQ, and a tube preamp called a Creamliner 2 from Sonicfarm. With these main pieces, I carefully balanced and enhanced the overall frequency range, while controlling various areas of both micro and macro dynamics to give them that final glue and polish. The various tube stages driven at carefully chosen levels imparted really sweet additional harmonics that I felt helped the many small detailed layers that live and breathe in each song. This was all captured cleanly into the workstation where the final limiting was applied.” – Shawn Hatfield.

Artwork
Francis Kmiecik and I storyboarded a video for Asymmetry Codex and as time was running out, and our lives became increasingly busy – we decided to roll it back to a few shots for the album artwork. We shot on a stage in Portland, OR with Katrina Mishler who was tolerant, patient with us and overall a pleasure to work with. Francis spent the weeks leading up to the shoot designing the set pieces and we used some of his chainmail jewelry he created but never utilized. The wardrobe and jewelry was provided by Hvnter Gvtherer. Laura of Hvnter Gvtherer has a visual and sensory aesthetic that I subconsciously envision when planning out images. I knew from Francis’ work, the shots would be very studio and staged and clean, so I enlisted Moe Espinosa to take our selects and run it through a circuit bent video machine. Anj Puglise and I then overlapped the studio images and the pixelated assets and pieced it all together. Essentially the same core team that worked on Temple of the Weakening Sun created the visuals for Asymmetry Codex. Overall, two covers were chosen, an elegant version to grace the physical vinyl copy and a harsh digital treatment for the digital version.

Lacquering and Vinyl
Off of the recommendation of Joshua Eustis and former Hefty label owner John Hughes, I got in touch with Jason Ward of Chicago Mastering Service and will say that this is the best possible sounding record it can be. Gottagroov handled the pressing and printing and as always, its always beautiful to hold a complete project in your hands. Wax Mage does what they do and created some of the best looking records I’ve ever seen, the pictures don’t do it justice and only some of you will be lucky enough to see it in its full glory.

Temple of the Weakening Sun
For more information about the creation of the soundtrack and video go: HERE

– Asymmetry Codex / Temple of the Weakening Sun
– Hvnter Gvtherer
– Audible Oddities
– Chicago Mastering Service
– Temple of the Weakening Sun Production Notes

Digital release date: July 7th, 2015. Estimated vinyl ship date: mid-August 2015.
Surachai Bandcamp

Weight In Minimalism
Leaving Heavy Mask sparse left me in doubt for several weeks. Every layer I added seemed to take away from its initial severity and grit, and wash away the detail of the foundation tracks. I eventually surrendered to its simplicity and worked with maximizing the details. As a result of its simplicity, it’s been called a grower and not a show-er. Heavy Mask was written, mixed, and organized with vinyl as the preferred listening method.

Thermionic Culture Vulture Super 15
Everything on this album went through a Thermionic Culture Vulture Super 15. The Culture Vulture Super 15 is a very strange piece of processing gear that I have trouble recommending to anyone. The TCVS15 is a very specific tool for a very specific person – and apparently, I don’t know any of these people. The Cwejman S1 MKII was fed into the Eventide Space and into the Thermionic Culture Vulture Super 15 and was sequenced by the Make Noise RENE. If you’ve listened to Ritual or read its accompanying article, this should sound familiar. Except for the TCVS15, the signal flow is identical to how Ritual was recorded. If you want an extreme comparison, listen to how clean and dynamic Ritual is and come back to listen to Heavy Mask. On the flip side, Form Volume II was pre-mastered with the TCVS15 and was cleaned up and sparkly by the time it hit mastering.

Drums
The drums were performed by Charlie Werber during this past brutal Chicago winter. You may remember Charlie from Embraced where I’m still in awe of his performance. In the Heavy Mask recording sessions, Charlie simplified and complimented the existing tracks I brought in. In an active rehearsal space, I recorded Charlie using 4 microphones: 2 Earthworks QTC40’s for the overheads, 2 SM57’s on the kick and top of the snare, everything went directly into the RME UFX. UAD’s Neve 88RS, UA1776, and LA2A were heavily used.

Artwork
Sarah Sitkin. I’ve known Sarah for almost 10 years and I’m probably her biggest fan. She’s responsible for the artwork on To No Avail a few years ago and how much she’s evolved in that time is breathtaking. Hell, how much she’s evolved since creating the Heavy Mask cover just over a month ago is amazing.
John Crawford is the only person you need to follow on Instagram. Together, John and Emilie created the Ritual artwork last year and I needed John’s aesthetic on Heavy Mask as well. He’s been essential for creative input as well as execution and his instinct overrule mine.
Caspar Newbolt was responsible for the entirety of the artwork on Embraced and helped lay out Ritual. He graciously lent a hand again with making sure the vinyl packaging and general layout was consistent with our combined high standards.
A quick word about censorship: Heavy Mask will not appear anywhere that censors the human body, so far this only includes iTunes and its services.

Mastering
Shawn Hatfield of Audible Oddities. Again, always. The versions Shawn send back make me feel like I’m listening to a fully formed thought as opposed to just a number of tracks I made and ordered. Shawn brought Heavy Mask to a level clarity and brutality I’ve rarely heard before.

“When I first heard these songs, I immediately thought about how they’d benefit from being pushed a bit harder than normal through my chain, to bring in some subtle saturation and harmonics. I felt this really showed off the exceptional work Surachai had already done at the mix stage. I focused mostly on getting the gain staging for each piece of equipment just right to get the optimal sound for each song. In these various stages, the songs passed through several transformers, starting with Carnhill, into a pair of amorphous core Lundahl’s and then into a pair of Cinemag’s. I used two different tube stages along the way; one for transparent vari-mu compression using the Knif Vari Mu II, and the other a colorful class A tube pre-amp called a Creamliner II that adds some great detail by adding triode harmonics. At the end of the chain, a Dangerous BAX EQ was used to help balance the lows and highs just prior to capture.”

Lacquering, Plating, and Printing
The signal flow was the same as Ritual: Roger of SAE handled the lacquering which is then sent to Metalworks for plating and then to Gottagroov for the printing. The records are 180 grams and the jackets are thick tip-on boards with a matte finish that makes the artwork particularly menacing.

BL_K NOISE
This is the fourth vinyl release on BL_K NOISE. Moe Espinosa / Drumcell, who runs the label with me, described BL_K NOISE perfectly, “a small label to release music that is not restrained by genre or expectations. An open format label to release whatever music we feel like whenever we want.” What Moe left out is that all of our releases have been DIY, we go through great lengths to be involved in every step of the process and stand proudly behind out releases artistically on all levels. Anyone that has bought our vinyl can speak to the high quality.

We don’t pay for PR, promotion, or print and somehow we sell out of our releases. It’s equally humbling as it is confusing. Thank you for the support, it means more than you’ll ever know.

– Sarah Sitkin
– John Crawford
– Shawn Hatfield
– Caspar Newbolt

Reference 1

Reference 2

Deep Dream submitted by Jordan Paschke