Lifecutter: BLADES / PATTERNS (Vile Descent Tapes, 2021)


Perspectives of duality have always remained a capital preoccupation of any artistic work I’ve been involved with. Topics that dealt with the differences, contrasts and exclusions, or unexpected parallels and interchanges, intrigued my quest to reveal those grey areas and, to an unwary eye, overlooked particulars. Being attracted to the concept of double albums and what artists wanted to convey through them (in bringing forth a vast amount of recorded material that demanded much more attention and focus, in contrast to these express next-to-no-attention times of consumerism), it felt like a sort of perplexity put forth, to discern, grasp and capture something of the distinct value of that particular sound work – and that, in itself, became something that I greatly appreciated in my musical tastes and an element of a (self-)recognition of an achieved feat or accomplishment.
The particular nature of the era that envelops us all creates conformity and a sense of complacency (easily succumbing to the lure of over-pleasing or maintaining the status quo) and to someone who’s confronted and is deeply involved with music (in its broadest scopes and orientations), the organic need to perform live and enjoy the collective experience of sharing have suddenly disappeared from our view and forced us to question the affairs and times we are all living through. Musicians, artists and performers, all of us, have had to resort to live streams only.
The physicality of sound in a proper venue, and the overall environment attached to it, simply vanished; the new reality had to be embraced: no more crowds, who were always a crucial part of live shows. Video streams that are recorded and available for constant revisiting, at our disposal at all times, affected new digital perspectives in areas we never thought could come to dominate (online platforms/archiving); it forced us all to become accustomed to the new challenges of delivering each consecutive ‘live’ act or a stream.
The production of both Blades and Patterns transpired on those grounds; pushed the creativity into hyper-productivity mode and from the onslaught of assorted material from each live set, the beast was ready to howl and growl.
Presumptuous as it might have appeared, it did pan out well in the end, with a double album as a final result.
All in all, it’s a two-sided chimera  a work of two monolith slabs, and packed and presented as such to the listening audience.


Blades is a dance floor oriented take, a version that was performed as a live set and recorded in the same manner. It’s a techno mix completely done with a selection of unreleased tracks. The whole set is recorded on a stereo track as an improvisation, a snapshot of a real-time movement, where behind every change, the fiddling of the knobs can be heard; faders and sequences, with hardly any post-production, but with a clear focus on the vibe of a live environment.
Capturing those unexpected but treasured moments/mistakes, that make the recording session unique, excitable and unrepeatable and therefore something to be shared in the aforementioned double album format.

Patterns is even more prone to imperfection and improvisation, with an occasional hint of the techno dark-room-dungeon dance floor. Polyrhythms, noises, oscillations and imperfect loops, not tailored to the grid  evoke the push in the brain, an impulse to bring order to chaos or the urge to let yourself loose, roll with it naturally and let it mess with triggered visions and perceptions.
SOMA Lyra 8 and Elektron Digitakt are the only selected machines used in the recording of “patterns”. I also exclusively used Ableton’s free download sample pack “Sounds from The Polish Radio Experimental Studio” with the Digitakt, and I found immense freedom and a burst of creativity in constricting and at the same time focusing my creative possibilities, with the limited tools I had in front of me. The whole process was done in that carefully chosen yet free-form manner, with no (outer or inner) pressure to meet any of the expectations or desired guidelines of any kind of existing (or non-existing) agency.

— LC