Cliff Thorburn

New remix chain album from Shinobi Cuts features a remix of a remix of a remix etc. Great vibe on this chain.

The cover image comes from Matong last weekend.

Working on the Chain

The new year brings a new Shinobi Cuts remix chain. Toastboat was released last month and we've started a new chain with a track from DJ Pnutz -- whose track on the last release was astounding.

Embedded above is my first attempt at remixing her track Infrasonics. It felt a bit self-indulgent adding my kids but their voices add a lightness to the material. The bassline you hear was recorded last year for a friend's track but seemed to suit and ended up in the final draft.

The logo for Shinobi Cuts shown here was one I designed. We wanted a ninja to reference the Ninja Tune Forum where our projects originated. Shinobi is, of course, another term for Ninjutsu, and cuts are a term for tunes. There's a version of the logo on Bandcamp that shows ninjas passing parts for a song.

Las Animas County, Colorado

"Las Animas County, Colorado 6/7/2014" from Ken Engquist on Vimeo.

Beaut timelapse footage with a lovely piece of music by my sometime collaborator Lee Rosevere of Happy Puppy Records.

Lee and I most recently worked on the Shinobi Cuts Remix Chain album, when I took his track in a darker direction.

New Remix Chain now up

The third Ninja Tune Forum Remix Chain, Toastboat, is now online.

Restyn Park Remix remixed by Kelp

The Disquiet Junto this week prompted me to return to remixing Restyn Park, which I'd recorded nearly two years ago.

It also encouraged me to see if Kelp wanted to remix the track to share the process he introduced me to in the Ninja Tune remix chains we've been running. We're currently part way through our third chain and once again it's linking together producers from around the world, including some like Lee Rosevere who I recruited from the Junto.

Below is a sampler of our last collection of remixes.

Pulling the chain

There's a piece I've written about the new Remix Chain album on Cyclic Defrost, click here and learn more.

New remix chain

Oceandrift out now

Oceandrift is an interesting collaboration I've been involved with through the Ninja Tune forum.

About a year ago Kelp put forward this idea to develop a project where people remixed the previous track, so it would chart a daisy chain as producers picked apart and reassembled sounds and added new elements.

When I remixed my section last year it was the first remix I'd done in ages and, aside from being philosophical about my role, it was a bug that bit me and I started developing my project to remix parks and playgrounds in Leeton -- which will be out next month.

Over the years the Ninja Tune forum has seen a variety of these types of remix compilations, from seven-minute mixes of selected artists to remix competitions where the winner would offer a track and judge the responses (actually, this was about a decade ago and I wish there were more of them) to another one where people got the previous bar and created a four-bar contribution, which overlapped with the last bar and you passed your last bar along to the next producer.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to listening to the result of this remix project now the compilation is online. The Oceandrift is now adrift! Kelp paid to have the whole thing mastered and, judging by what I've heard of my track, the engineer did a great job. So please, have a listen and consider making a financial contribution.

And you can hear a bit of my track in this video too :)



Or hear clips from the Ocean Drift album via the following.