The inspiration came from a committment to work on shorter pieces yet to retain some of the looseness (chaos?) inherent in the non-linear approach I've been exploring for some time. I got a real boost from the ultra-cool artwork by (Headshock other half) Tim Rafferty, although I've taken certain liberties with it here, twisting, cutting and generally brutalising to fit my nebulous concepts.
There's an image for every track. Actually, I had a lot more tracks and images than I've used, but I tried to keep the best for flow and narrative. It could have been much longer but weaker. The album's title was originally Ambrosia Imagined, then Tim came up with 'Incarnate' as an improvement. It stayed the main theme for a while, then I realised Ambrosia didn't really capture the mood so well compared to Approximation. It could almost have been called 'Appropriation Index' given the current state of AI.
Most of the tracks are performed on just two synths - Tim's Jupiter 6 and my Udo Super 6. Each have different strengths but they play beautifully together, I think. One track is entirely done on my lovely green Korg MS20, layered and looped - see if you can spot which. In places there is a Moog DFAM tapping away and even a tiny bit of my Casio piano is slipped in. Everything was captured into a 1010music BlackBox then arranged live. In terms of FX, the Strymon BigSky and NightSky are given rigorous workouts and Roland's RC-505 (old and new) were invaluable companions too. Sequencing courtesy of the Octatrack (and P3 for the MS20 track). I think that's pretty much the whole story.
