The Dark Side: Gothic, Industrial (Dance / Rock / Metal), Futurepop, Shoegaze, Post Punk... anybody out there?

[ohmygoff]

Hi there,

anybody out there into the darker side of things and willing to share tricks, tips, favourite bands - stuff in general?

Regards,
ohmygoff

[eusti]

I still like some of the "darker" stuff... What bands are you talking about?
But I don't think I'm the right person to offer any advice...

D.

[ohmygoff]

Well, I'm not really looking for advice, more trying to set up a little corner here for the ones that are not that into electronica, trance or anything like that.

Just curious if there's anybody out there, making darker stuff with Reason.

Personally, I seem to end up with either making melancholic Cure-clone stuff or in-your-face-distort-everything-and-add-guitars stuff.

So basically this thread is just an attempt to connect and share whatever may occur.

Bands I could mention to give a hint: Joy Division, Bauhaus, Siouxsie, Cure, Dead Can Dance, Chameleons, Sisters, Nine Inch Nails, Front 242, Type O Negative, Paradise Lost, Clan Of Xymox, VNV Nation, Das Ich, Einstürzende Neubauten, Agonoize, Das Ich, Wumpscut, Ikon, Tyske Ludder, Fields Of The Nephilim (in no particular order)

[eusti]

Thank you explaining!

I like a lot of the bands in your list and would count them as an influence... I like some more pop oriented acts as well: OMD, Pet Shop Boys, etc.
More recently I like Iris' new album Radiant or Tesla Boy's stuff...

D.

[Ocean of Waves]

I'm in this band, in its core our music is Black Metal but we fuse it with electronic music. The two songs beneath also makes use of a drum machine (Kong) but we're recording a new album with a real drummer, the first since 2003.

90% of the sounds you hear are Reason, I played some hardware synths and a few iOS ones. A lot of percussion parts are recorded with stuff lying around. Guitars are real amps.

[tumar]

Hello,
I spend years in EBM, dark electro scene. I met my wife there I was gigging on festivals like Amphi Fest (Cologne), Dark Place, dark clubs and so on. I was close to Suicide Commando, Hocico and so on genre. BTW, first Hocico albums were 100% made in Propellerheads Reason on Powermac G4 (it was listed on their old website).
Now I'm more into tribal industrial scene (industrial mixed with tribal drums):

Edit:
"willing to share tricks"
My trick: I record short hand drum loops, save it to rex and load its slices to redrum. Then I rearange slices as redrum steps in different orders It's good way to diversivy the groove.

[Benedict]

Hi 

I used to write a variant of EBM in my Aeroplastic Voice days that loosely sticky-taped up Front 242, Skinny Puppy, Ultravox, Gary Numan and raw Punk.

http://benedictroffmarsh.com/2010/03/24 ... tic-anger/

I then did a four track (cassette) EP of electronic Doom Metal which was fun but now doesn't see the light of day.

I have a few Goth type albums and Clan of Xymox's "Twist of Shadows" is a fave. I think it is so beautiful. That record and Xmal Deutschland's "Mondlicht" were the main ideas behind this track from my last album

https://benedictroff-marsh.bandcamp.com/track/bats

No tips as such as I found that very, very hard to mix.

Why don't you post us some of your Gothy tunes??

[Ocean of Waves]

About the difficulty, I think metal music is very very hard to get right in a mix.

[tumar]

Plastic Anger reminds me a bit old electronic dark wave or really old ebm tunes Something like that:

I don't post tune here because I ended with that - I haven't record anything and gigging since few years. Removed my-space profile. Now it's my pure hobby - paradoxally, now I spent more money on it than before, I purchase drums, software etc. I spend time with my family, I play drums with my son (he is todler but pretty catches the rhytm). He loves to dance, so I compose short dance tracks in Reason just for my boy. Oh, and we both love to freak with microphone and Reason vocoder
I had also serious hear damage, I recover slowly - so if I make tracks now, it's something like dark ambient - evolving, transy, relaxing (generally: boring ).

[rabu]

Hi ohmygoff,

I like your "little dark corner" here, so I'm happy to join
I play keyboards in a band called Psyche:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydm4rDn ... freload=10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccn0yvo ... freload=10

We use all kinds of things, but these two particular tracks are 100% Reason, plus a Moog and two old digital hardware units for mastering.

Most of the stuff we play live nowadays and also the new tracks are mixed in Reason.

Willing to share any tricks and tips, but don't know where to start?

[eusti]

Great stuff here! Thanks for sharing!

- Ocean of Waves: Though not really my style of music I enjoyed watching the album preview. I like behind the scenes stuff and was really drawn in here!
- Tumar: Neat. Didn't even know that kind of style existed...
- Benedict: I can hear the influences in Bats!
- Rabu: The good, old Psyche... I remember "Unveiling the Secret" well from the old times in the local club... So, since that song must have originally been done before Reason was even on the market did you recreate the sounds with samples or did you manage to program them with stock or RE devices for your live set up?

D.

[Phil513]

I enjoy stoner/doom type stuff.  I don't really know if it qualifies as dark though.  Compared to Katy Perry it is i guess. lol.

[Masushi]

Hi,

just wanted to contribute to this dark Corner. I recorded a full CD-Album 100% made with Reason (with songs from my project called "Shadowpay"). I´m more into bands like "Bauhaus", Cure, Danse Society, Joy Division, Ikon, Siouxsie & the Banshees and many others from the 80s to the 90s.

But I like some Futurepop as well (in Germany we called it "Weiberelektro") Bands like Covenant, VNV Nation or Apoptygma Berzerk...

BTW, if anybody has some effect-chain combinators done for guitar or bassguitar, I really would like to try them out. Especially with amps from Kuassa.

@rabu: I saw "Psyche" last year in Kiel, Germany (31.10.14) in the "Schaubude".You were just great.

[Ocean of Waves]

About Joy Division, I'm really really obsessed by the ambience and space in their music. Closer in particular is a favorite of mine. 

[Ocean of Waves]

Great stuff here! Thanks for sharing!

- Ocean of Waves: Though not really my style of music I enjoyed watching the album preview. I like behind the scenes stuff and was really drawn in here!

Glad you liked it

[tumar]

I love Covenant! "Dark" is wide category, I think better is german "Schwarze Szene".

[rabu]

Thank you for your nice comments.

@eusti: The current version of Unveiling is done exclusively in Reason. The main lead is Antidote (strings) plus Viking through Pulveriser (grumpf). Main bass is Polysix. Live, I add some bass on a Moog LP through a bucket brigade delay and some synth strings with Thor plus some sound effects. We created new versions of other songs which have been way more difficult to program (The Crawler, Misery, Eternal, The Saint Became A Lush, Goodbye Horses, Tears, Sanctuary, ...). Unveiling The Secret is comparatively easy.

@Masushi: Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the show. Please say "hello" next time you see us. Should be fun to talk

@Ocean of Waves: Can you teach me how to quote here, please?

[Ocean of Waves]

Try and find this image and click it

 

[rabu]

@eusti: I forgot to mention a MonoPoly and some other things. Just looked it up - we did not use any samples, not even for fx like thunder. Here is a screenshot of the instruments in case you're curious.

[rabu]

Thank you Ocean of Waves - I'm blind sometimes

Originally posted by Ocean of Waves
Try and find this image and click it

[eusti]

This is great, Rabu! Thanks for explaining!

D.

[eusti]

I love Covenant! "Dark" is wide category, I think better is german "Schwarze Szene".

Well, here in the US black music usually has other connotations...
I used to be really into the Future Pop stuff as well... Actually used to take pix for one of the labels at that time...

D.

[Purpleb]

About Joy Division, I'm really really obsessed by the ambience and space in their music. Closer in particular is a favorite of mine. 

Ditto. The basslines are high leaving a great area of space for drums and subtle effects. Guitar work is thin, minimal but still cuts through. Love it, everything sounds soooo big, but still everything feels like it has it's own space and a lot of it.

[ohmygoff]

Wow! I'm amazed by such a response in such a short time!

It'll take some time for me to read all your posts thoroughly and reply accordingly, for now let me just say I'm pretty happy that I found people here sharing my musical interests.

Oh, and... yes, Phil, 'doom' qualifies as 'dark' to me.

Let's get this place a little darker...

[ohmygoff]

Why don't you post us some of your Gothy tunes??

Hi Benedict,

on http://fromtheattic.bandcamp.com/ you'll find all the stuff I had the energy to finish to a point where I dared to publish it...

From the date (2010) you'll see that I'm not that productive when it comes to finished tracks - I just gather snippets and hope to find a use for them some day, mainly. That's one of the reasons I started this thread: getting input, inspiration, ideas...

Most of this stuff was made with a classical 2 guitars/bass/keyboards/drums/vocals band setup in mind, so while it may sound repetitive at times, these tracks are meant to have vocals (which I'm not the best person in the world to provide...), so I tried to leave space for that.

The exception from this is 'Fallen Angel', which just happened as a response to a PUF post where the general idea was to represent an angel and his (or its?) fall in one track. Kind of a finger exercise...