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“At the turning of the day…” celebrates a turning point in my musical career, and the Expert Sleepers disting mk4 and disting EX were a big part of that. Until a year or so before the pandemic I was exclusively a blues, rock and jazz guitarist and played in bands. I gradually switched to modular synthesizer music after being introduced to the ARP Odyssey, Moog Mother 32 and other semi-modular synthesizers as well as getting into the generative ambient music of Brian Eno. I gradually built up a system as I went along, and the disting mk4 was the beginning of that system. The central idea of my setup is that it should be able to do just about anything, or rather, it should be able tackle as many musical ideas that I can throw at it as possible but at the same time fulfill some of the purpose of a band member, hence the large collection of multifunctional and generative modules that reside within it.
The music is non-traditional in its approach to songwriting in the sense that it is not composed with intros, choruses and solos in mind and fans of genres such as Drone and Ambient will feel right at home. Some tracks are loop-based while others make use of evolving melodies to keep you hooked as well as containing prominent guitar parts to contrast the sounds of synthesizers.
The disting EX and mk4 were used on every track for ‘At the turning of the day…’ in central or supporting roles depending on where the music took me. Sometimes I began with an algorithm I had never used before and built music around that and other times I had a specific idea that I tried out and liked the results I got from the disting. One of the EX’s greatest strengths is its capacity for playing chords and, together with the Instruo Harmonaig, I found the perfect modular solution for chordal accompaniment while I played guitar. The other is its capacity to become more or less any kind of ‘voice’ in one’s setup. From a traditional monophonic VCO, to polyphonic sample player, granular synthesizer or wavetable oscillator.
Smoke/black foil cassette, in jewel case and o-card.
Composed and recorded by John Reidar Holmes
Artwork by Philip Holmes
Mastered by James Edward Armstrong
Released by Expert Sleepers