By Keith Walsh
A mix of both orchestral instruments and synthesizers offers compelling possibilities. In the hands of David Ralicke, whose ambient sounds incorporate saxophone, flugelhorn and clarinet, as well as Moog synths and treated banjo and glockenspiel, the results are breathtakingly surreal.

Ralicke hails from Los Angeles with an extensive discography and touring credentials that include Beck and Dengue Fever. His new album, Space Between Clouds from a project of the same name, finds him in full on studio wizard mode, drawing on a process that is based on intuition and music theory. In an email exchange, I asked him what role randomness plays in his compositional approach. He tells me: “Randomness is super important on this recording. But often it’s randomness at a very slow rate which is an important distinction because randomness at faster rates can be a beautiful mayhem which was not the intent here.”

Indeed, the tracks on this 44 minute, five track set feature long sustained notes in a style worthy of comparison to the likes of Brian Eno, Harold Budd, and Roedelius. Ralicke explains: “There are definitely some very long notes going on there.  I was using the sample and hold from the (Moog) Matriarch to generate some randomized filter events.…The synths have a lot of atmospheric chance programmed using note events randomized within parameters and there are also many subtle randomized modulations. All the melodic elements pertaining to the wind instruments are improvisations first. Some are a single take and some received more treatment after.”

The legendary sound of Moog Synths feature on this album, as Ralicke plays his Moog Matriarch, his Moog Minitaur, as well as the Elektron Analog Four and Digitone, on Space Between Clouds. “Moog oscillators,” he writes, “in the raw, have a sound that I like and then of course you can shape them all day. There are so many great analog synths out there but Moog holds a special space in my palette of sounds. I also find that the Moog sound, for some reason, blends easily with the wind instruments that I play and acoustic instruments in general.”

Of those wind instuments, Ralicke played them all, altering the sounds with studio trickery. “I played tenor sax, soprano sax, flugelhorn and clarinet. I did some granular synthesis with a glockenspiel.  The bulk of the synths are hardware that I played or programmed. That plucked instrument is an old 1920’s ukulele banjo run which I then ran through a software granular synth called The Mangle which sadly isn’t supported anymore . I really loved its interface.”

Ralicke’s approach to music making has some esoteric features, though the end result on Space Between Clouds is an absorbing, dreamlike soundscape. “Music is fundamentally a dynamic mystery. It’s an organic code that’s always changing. Sure, in every culture there are rules and laws of acceptability but they are never static. My goal was to convey emotional context by using as few notes as possible.”

Get The FX
Of his DAW and gear, Ralicke writes: “I use Logic to record most of the time though sometimes I’m loving Ableton too. For this recording I mainly used just the audio part of Logic and no midi implementation or virtual instruments…The effects are mainly what’s in the synths (Elektron and Moog) but in addition during mixing I used Valhalla VintageVerb  and Supermassive, Xfer records LFO tool, Oeksound Soothe 2, some sound toys stuff (most likely filterfreak?)  I think I used a Red Panda particle (a pedal), Cargo Cult Slapper ST. There might be a couple more , I like the old PSP Microwarmer so I most likely used that too here and there.”

Space Between Clouds in on AKP Recordings, and can be heard on Bandcamp, and all the familiar streamers. There are a couple of videos by Ralicke that capture the trippy, dreamlike essence of the album.

Space Between Clouds On AKP Recordings
Experimental Sounds And Visions On Synthbeat.com
David Ralicke On Facebook
David Ralicke On YouTube
AKP Recordings On YouTube

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