A Shiver Sequence
Rob Clouth
16.04.2020
Mesh030
Digital
Buy / Stream - single / Album
About
On Zero Point, a new LP for Max Cooper’s Mesh imprint, Rob Clouth delves deep into themes of chance, chaos, coincidence and the ephemeral, using the zero-point energy from quantum mechanics as a unifying concept. Exploiting his skills as a software developer, Clouth has created a suite of tools that tap into data
from the ANU Quantum Random Number Server (QRNS), an online service that publishes real-time measurements from the zero-point energy field. Zero Point is a love letter to noise, written with data sampled from the core of the universe.
A Shiver Sequence is the 3rd single from Zero Point, and is an attempt from Rob at relinquishing some of the control of the writing process to a true random system - the zero-point energy field.
Clouth’s creativity is enhanced by his own expertise in software development. On ‘A Shiver Sequence’ you can hear the QRNS data used to stochastically trigger vocal snippets, drums and other layers, resulting in 100 unique versions of the track that will be available upon release. A piece of self-made software called the
‘Reconstructor’ chops sampled sounds into tiny pieces and rearranges them to replicate a target sound. This allowed Clouth to use and manipulate his own beatboxing, a technique used on ‘Into’ and ‘The Vacuum
State’.
While initially frustrated because his process usually relies on iterating over the same deterministic sequence again and again, he learned to not grow too attached to any specific detail or fill and instead try to control the bounds of the system to consistently generate interesting variations. Although in the next listen that one
beautiful little sequence would be gone, usually something equally interesting would introduce itself.
Behind this there is a nice message: Rob describes, “even if existence is an ephemeral coincidence and nothing lasts forever, eventually something else equally beautiful will spontaneously emerge from the chaos”.
It's an endless process that will produce endless variations. Rob wanted to add human element to the randomness, and so he asked 61 friends and family to record the numbers 0 to 9, chopped them up and then wrote a patch to trigger and pan them according to the data from the zero-point field. Rob explains, “It’s a strange experience for me listening to it back and trying to identify each voice”
Rob has exported 102 unique versions of the track, one is on the digital release, one on the vinyl (A Shivered Sequence) and the other 100 will be given to the 100 first supporters of the vinyl.
from the ANU Quantum Random Number Server (QRNS), an online service that publishes real-time measurements from the zero-point energy field. Zero Point is a love letter to noise, written with data sampled from the core of the universe.
A Shiver Sequence is the 3rd single from Zero Point, and is an attempt from Rob at relinquishing some of the control of the writing process to a true random system - the zero-point energy field.
Clouth’s creativity is enhanced by his own expertise in software development. On ‘A Shiver Sequence’ you can hear the QRNS data used to stochastically trigger vocal snippets, drums and other layers, resulting in 100 unique versions of the track that will be available upon release. A piece of self-made software called the
‘Reconstructor’ chops sampled sounds into tiny pieces and rearranges them to replicate a target sound. This allowed Clouth to use and manipulate his own beatboxing, a technique used on ‘Into’ and ‘The Vacuum
State’.
While initially frustrated because his process usually relies on iterating over the same deterministic sequence again and again, he learned to not grow too attached to any specific detail or fill and instead try to control the bounds of the system to consistently generate interesting variations. Although in the next listen that one
beautiful little sequence would be gone, usually something equally interesting would introduce itself.
Behind this there is a nice message: Rob describes, “even if existence is an ephemeral coincidence and nothing lasts forever, eventually something else equally beautiful will spontaneously emerge from the chaos”.
It's an endless process that will produce endless variations. Rob wanted to add human element to the randomness, and so he asked 61 friends and family to record the numbers 0 to 9, chopped them up and then wrote a patch to trigger and pan them according to the data from the zero-point field. Rob explains, “It’s a strange experience for me listening to it back and trying to identify each voice”
Rob has exported 102 unique versions of the track, one is on the digital release, one on the vinyl (A Shivered Sequence) and the other 100 will be given to the 100 first supporters of the vinyl.