All-around Breakdown: Experimental Artist Graham Dunning On His "Mechanical Techno" Set-up & Tentation 12-inch LP (White Denim #27)
"Tweaking, improving, and modifying a machine is what I've been doing with Mechanical Techno since starting the project a few years ago. This process gives the record it's title, the mostly obsolete word, "tentation;" a more colloquial word for the same thing might be fettling. The two tracks that make up this album are each made through a process of fettling a musical machine. I started playing more abstract, Noise-based turntable sets in 2008, usually playing with several turntables, modified hardware and vinyl, guitar effects pedals, cymbals, springs, marbles, rolls of tape, dentistry tools, and anything I could get my hands on. The focus in the early days was texture, drone, controlled feedback, and surface noise, but still with some rhythmical elements that scratched up records naturally provide. I used randomly occurring snippets of sound and samples disconnected from context quite a lot in those early recordings and live sets, too. Sometime later, I b...