To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures', Jodrell Bank released the pulsar sound wave [->] which was famously used by Peter Saville on the cover.

As his own homage to the album, Alan Burke, aka The Brooklyn Foundation, used the sound wave as a starting point before layering this with his own dark electronic tones and ghostly vocal clips of the late Ian Curtis

The CP1919 sound wave was perfect as a percussion element. Detuned and processed, then turned into a rhythm part alongside a recreation of the famous Roland TR808 kick drum and a digital recreation of the Linn LM1 drum machine (see also: Prince, The Human League).

Alan Burke explained that he wanted huge spaces in the piece so big reverbs were obviously required and used in abundance. Alongside hardware synthesisers by Roland and Arturia, he used Logic Pro X for a bass part and building elements of the tune. The whole thing was recorded in 1 day!

Alan has been a musician for over 36 years with varying degrees of success. Having enjoyed some notoriety in the 90s, he's worked with many musicians and vocalists supplying "his own brand of musical and technical nonsense".

More recently, Alan was asked to record 3 tracks as a tribute to the artists on the Mute record label. He chose 3 tracks by the seminal English electro due, Yazoo. He says he enjoyed the challenge and the tunes were "very well received, very well thankfully".

All of The Brooklyn Foundation's music is written and recorded in Alan's home studio in Salford, Greater Manchester, which I'm sure has no bearing on his love of Joy Division or New Order!

- Iain Key for Cerysmatic Factory. Many thanks Iain.

Labels: Iain_Key, Joy_Division, The_Brooklyn_Foundation, Unknown_Pleasures

- - - -