And this time around I *do* have something new for you. It’s called NUMBERTHUMPER by Dirty Knobs and it’s kind of a weird one. What can I say? Sometimes ideas need to be pursued to their natural end if for no other reason than to get rid of them and make way for others. A just really wanted to use the numbers I recorded ages ago, and I really needed to make something painfully loud and distorted. Here’s my best explanation:
a lost, shambling machine the size of cities, all clanks and shakes and fretful whirrs, broadcasting a series of numbers that have lost their meaning, yet must be spoken, the still air pushed by overdriven vibrations, an invisible wall flattening the night as the machine drifts through a relentless fog illuminated by cloud bursts of faint green and yellow light, plods over ash covered fields, animals watch it pass with dull curiosity while the furrowed trail the droning, broken machine leaves behind fills with bubbling tar and rust and steam, pools of water with no moon to reflect.
It’s been about five months since it was released and I’m just now getting around to talking about the on-demand via elasticStage vinyl release of SCORCHER by Dirty Knobs.
For a much more detailed step-by-step run through of the experience you can check out this post about my three-part ROOMS release. The SCORCHER process was exactly the same regarding the album page creation and ordering/shipping process. tl;dr It’s very reasonable, fast, and sounds great.
SCORCHER is quite a different album from ROOMS, and it’s given me a better feel for the sound quality that elasticStage delivers. This time is felt like the disc’s surface noise was a little more present, but this could be because the music on SCORCHER is much more dynamic so one is prone to turning the volume up a bit at the beginning which also increases the volume of the surface noise. (I am always turning the music up, and up, and up as I go, just generally speaking, so your milage may vary.)
So this is not an audiophile quality product by any means, at least as far as the vinyl is concerned, but it is still, in my estimation, worth the cost and worth checking out if you are a musician or band looking for a way to sell directly to fans without having to rent a storage space to house 1000s of copies and deal with shipping out of an extra bedroom.
You can listen to SCORCHERhere and buy the digital download (starting at just $1US) there. You can order the on-demand vinyl and/orCD copy here and get all of my elasticStage releases here.
I’m excited to announce that a new Dirty Knobs album is on the way, releasing this Halloween. SCORCHER is something of a return to the early days of DK, back when it was more of an experimental glitch project. While I often try to obfuscate the equipment and raw sounds used to make songs, here I am keeping more of those elements clear and obvious with a focus on percussion and rhythm while still encasing it in a dark shroud of mystery and darkness and dark mystery.
I will be adding more preview tracks over the following weeks up until it releases on October 31st, so keep your dial tuned to the album page.
I hope you enjoy SCORCHER. I’ve put a tremendous amount of effort into it and I am very happy with the result. It sounds really good played very loud in a big room.
Here is a look into what I was thinking about while recording it:
Darkened ratways under the city’s megastructure pulse with a rolling, undulating rhythm. A dry scraping sound tumbles down howling shafts, racing against the falling condensation and pigeon shit. Shafts of pure white light catch drifts of dirt, dandruff, and fleas. A sub-harmonic pressure silently shakes tons of metal conduit, flaking off rust and paint in an abrasive red mist. Moss and slime house busy ecologies, living and dying and living again without any sense of history.
Fast shadows move like boiling oil against a glacial mass of decaying support struts. Cracks open, firing shrapnel across miles of emptiness. Eyeless heads turn vaguely toward the sound.
The city groans under its own weight, shifting, listing, settling onto waves of its past. Superheated jets of grime spray against concrete walls, eroding strange and shifting glyphs into the surface. The story they record is one of endings and obsoletion.
It’s well known that getting vinyl pressed can be a huge financial burden for smaller artists, not to mention high minimum orders that can reach into the thousands of pieces. This simply isn’t feasible for anyone that doesn’t want to empty their savings and then have to move hundreds of copies of their own album every time they get a new apartment over the next forty years.
elasticStage is a relatively new on-demand vinyl and CD service based in London. When I first heard about them (via a targeted Instagram ad) it sounded too-good-to-be-true. But they make it very easy to try out, and so I have. As always I can’t resist stress-testing systems like these, so I figured throwing the edited collection of my twenty-five hour ROOMS project at it would be a good place to start. Even when trimmed down to easily digestible lengths the collection of twenty-five songs clocks in at around two hours.
As luck would have it all but one track fit perfectly across three LPs and two CDs. There was only that one edit for length, and then a complete remastering for vinyl. (This was its own voyage and I’m happy to have learned a few things along the way.) Artwork was adapted from the original digital cover, with the newly updated Dirty Knobs logo swapped for the previous one. Otherwise this is the exact same thing you can already find on Bandcamp as a digital download for the low low entry fee of $1 USD (or more if you’d like).
This series, like many of my other deeply ambient works, is a natural fit for physical analog media. I’ve always strived to make music that is as far removed from its machine origins as possible, perhaps more than ever with this ROOMS series. The original format was twenty-five hour-long pieces with very little variation from their core concept. These pieces “strived to create individual sound environments. ‘Music’ for spaces left alone or otherwise ignored.” Liminal spaces, in other words. These can be highly meditative when focused on, or be used to fill the background for other creative endeavors. All of these full pieces can be found in The Endless Compendium, a paywalled garden where far too much of my work is kept safe from crushing the unwary in a content-alanche. But if you’re curious, give it a try.
PRODUCTION, SHIPPING, AND THE PHYSICAL PRODUCT
As I mentioned, creating each release was very straightforward. Anyone familiar with Bandcamp or its ilk will have no problems, aside from having to format the artwork for printing. Just remember to build it in CMYK and that black is C75, M68, Y67, K90 and that should get you pretty close to there.
After each release was built and uploaded, I placed a “test” order. I had to place separate orders for the three vinyl volumes and two CD volumes since they seem to have a three test copy maximum. I placed my orders on July 16th, and they shipped on July 30th. Keep in mind that traditional vinyl pressing can start with a six month wait and go up from there. Two-ish weeks is extraordinary. I received the vinyl August 8th and the CDs on the 9th. I live in the States so I had zero expectations on when these would arrive what with the state of absolutely everything right now. So while tracking through the Royal Mail was mostly unhelpful, they did get them here quickly and without any snags (other than sitting in customs for several days). They also arrived in great shape despite shipping in simple cardboard boxes with no extra padding.
Finally, to the products! Long story short (too late) they are excellent. I would not call them “premium” or “deluxe” by any means, but they are all well made, sturdy, clean, and very well and evenly printed. Bare bones, which is exactly what I was looking for with this project. There are options to add things like a booklet, which I did not do. (You can get all of the exact material specs here.) One note: The vinyl labels printed a bit darker than the sleeves, so if you’re really trying to color-match you’ll want to lighten up the labels. Check out the photos below to see the difference.
As for the sound quality, specifically the vinyl: This is a little tricky because the music itself is what you might call “lo-fi.” This was specifically my intent, making hazy, murky, dusty spaces where shapes are indistinct and echoes are confusing. But I can say that it sounds great. As others have mentioned there may be a little more surface noise with the vinyl than traditional pressing, but if anything I think any added hiss or pop only adds to the experience in this very specific case. I fully intend to try this in the future with more high fidelity projects, so I may update this if anything jumps out as a problem.
UPDATE: I originally forgot to say anything about pricing. The three test LPs were $31.90 (USD) each (no added tax) and shipped together for $15.66, a total of $111.36. The two test CDs were $12.90 each and shipped for $10.84, a total of $36.64. Keep in mind these were slightly discounted since they were tests sent to me, the artist/label, and I also have retail pricing set as low as possible. Artists can set much higher prices, and therefore get more of a return on sales, if they wish.
I am very happy and satisfied with my experience and the final product. I’ve added a few photos below to show them off. The lighting was difficult and these were taken over a couple days. Just be aware that the white lettering is indeed crisp and white and not at all blue or grey as some of these have come out.
HERE IS WHERE YOU CAN ORDER THEM. You can also listen to samples of each track there, or hear the entire collection on Bandcamp. I hope this helps anyone with questions about the service. I’ve read that SoundCloud will be partnering with elasticStage to create releases directly from SoundCloud. It would be incredible if Bandcamp would do this as well.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them over on the Bluesky post here.
FRISSON is Dirty Knobs’ return to the longform drone. A single midrange tone slowly evolving, de- and re-tuning endlessly, a shell of static undertones rising and pulsing around it. The sound of light speeding through empty space, of shapes rising from ocean depths, of swarms of sparks drifting down. A desperate, disconsolate wail. A bright wall of life pressing in. Voices in the fan. A total break from reality and a centering guide back to it.
Below is something of an explanation of what each song means to me, but you may find other interpretations. I would hope so, at least.
“Sticks on Skins” A friendly glow rides a muted rhythm, approaching through the mists, illuminating a larger, endless expanse.
“Older than Bones” Before there were bones, mountain ranges and vast oceans ebbed and flowed under the wind.
“The Seal Cannot Be After the Doorway” The cows have left the barn. The cat’s out of the bag. The genie is out of the bottle. You can’t put toothpaste back in the tube. The door is open behind us.
[missing] missing**
“More Fire in More Places” An alarm sounds, but it’s already here.
“Strange Years” Sit. Take five minutes for yourself. And five for everything you’ve lost.
“MUSIC PRODUCT: Sounds for no audience. (Side effects may include wisps, new colors, and unwanted feelings of hope.)” is the third in a series of ongoing meditative explorations from auditory atmospherist Zac Bentz, aka Dirty Knobs. Following on the heels of the much darker “666666SUPERSATAN,” the three gentle pieces in this collection are interconnected by the same base tones, with each piece teasing out new layers and interactions while adding their own unique elements.
Three extended dark meditations. Rituals, summonings, incantations, trance-inducing mantras, temporary escape hatches. All elements were recorded live, though not necessarily together at the same time. No “loops” in the traditional sense, and almost no editing. Captured moments in time to be re-released as needed. Maybe to bring a little fire into frozen places.
