Random sounds from inside my head
The online portfolio of Kurt Lorenz. Music, art, design, thought.
I am happy to announce my latest release Loop Collage, Vol. 1.
Created with Blocs Wave on iOS between January 2018 and December 2020. Mixed and mastered in Ableton Live, Cubasis 2/3, Final Touch, and Grand Finale.
This collection is my first foray into using iOS as my main music creation environment. Conceived, collected, collaged, mixed, and mastered by Kurt Lorenz.
"The loops are stock but the decisions are all mine."
I have been asked once again to create album art for one of my all-time favorite electronic artists Darren Borg. Having created the artwork for his previous two releases, 2012's The Beginning and the End and 2013's The Restoration of Abbie's I was very excited to have the chance to complete a trilogy with Darren. The first piece was based on a microscopy photo, the second a play on the vastness of space and time so I wanted to place this cover here and now and in our human scale. It just so happened that Darren wanted to name the album Moments and the first thing I thought of was seeing that term in the Apple Photos App on a daily basis so I knew I had to start with a photo... And having already used blue for the first cover and red/yellow for the second, I knew I wanted to go green.
While on a family outing through downtown Seattle, my wife driving, my 12 year old daughter shotgun and my 20-month old son and I in the middle row of our mini van I snapped a photo of the skyline through the rainy window.
Seattle from the backseat...
I enhanced the photo and put a filter on it in the native camera app and sent it to Darren to see if it spoke to him in any way... He said he loved it and was very interested to see what I would do with it. My first thought was to use the app Decim8 which is a great photo glitch app that yields really interesting results so I went to the App Store to download it and randomly came across an app called D3LTA which looked interesting. After playing around with it for awhile I came up with several different versions of the photo which I then manipulated in Photoshop to get to the proper dimensions for an album cover.
The trick to obtaining intricate results with D3LTA is running the filtered photo through the filter a second or third or fourth time...
Now here is the trick when working with clients... don't show them all of the versions that you make right away... only show them your top 2 or three at first. Every time I have broken this rule the client has chosen my least favorite design and I have had to finish out the project with less enthusiasm than I might have had otherwise. In this case I picked only 3 of the 12 designs to send to Darren, all of which I really liked. The nice thing about having the rest of these designs on hand, especially for album art, is that they can be used for other things, like the other pages in the digital booklet for liner notes or stickers, posters, gig flyers, Facebook headers, webpage graphics, etc...
So Darren picked his favorite and it was time to do the typography. Because I had already established a typographic style with the last two albums I immediately went to using that style as a default... I mean this was album three in the series so the typography had to be the same right? The more I pushed the text around the page I just kept feeling like it was not the way to go. I decided to choose a different typeface and style the text differently to fit better with the design that Darren had picked out. It didn't take very long for the final design to reveal itself... Darren is very happy with the final result and I am too...
Darren Borg Moments - Album art by Kurt Lorenz
You can learn more about the album and and get links to downloads from www.embermusic.com.
My track "Into Air," a collaboration with fellow Ember Music artist Coreena is available now. It is the lead track on Coreena's latest EP entitled Collabs + Remixes.
Featuring collabs with Richie Dagger’s Crime, Modal Morphosis, Noisegasm, Ember Music artists Kurt Lorenz and (my other musical project) The Never Were and remixes by Kjell, Stan Dart and J. Ohm.
I composed and performed the instrumental track and posted it online... Coreena heard it and asked if she could add vocals. She sent me her vocal recordings and I mixed the track...
The EP has received several favorable reviews including a 10/10 review by Canadian music mag CPG.
"This EP is the most forward thinking piece we have heard this year. Coreena has the voice that is and will rise through the electronic genre ranks and our predictions are that she will be obtaining many requests for track features in the near future.
This EP is not your typical piece of electronic music. It's experimental, deep, dark, groovy, and sonically rich in sound. Each track has its place yet molds into one another like an extended set. Our favorite track was "Into Air". This spiritual trip of simple sounds makes you feel like it is never ending. The progression of quality sounds really hits the mind where it is necessary and is perfect food for the mind, body and soul."
Rating: 10/10
So here we are... I have just completed a massive year-long project and I'm ready to start on a new musical adventure.
Over the last few years I have been working with my good friend Joe Love on an electronic- industrial project called The Never Were. We have a bunch of songs in demo form and I really like the direction it is going.
I'm going to spend the majority of my music time this year on The Never Were as we still have much to do. There will be guitar recording sessions, lyric writing and vocal sessions... Rewrites, edits and all of the producing that goes with it. Most of which is new-ish territory for me.
wish me luck..
I have completed the 2014 Weekly Beats challenge. I created 52 new pieces of music,
one each week, over the last year.
https://soundcloud.com/kurtlorenz/sets/weekly-beats-2014
After taking part in AN MOKU's How To Catch STILLE? project I was recently asked to remix the track Kodoma from the album MONONOCLE. You can get a behind-the-scenes look at the project here...
...and listen to the original track here:
Enjoy.
Remix of Kodoma by AN MOKU. http://soundcloud.com/anmoku/kodama
This is a soundscape mix that I created for the 2013 Search For Meaning Book Festival sponsored by Seattle University's School of Theology and Ministry. The Festival had an interactive installation which allowed participants to experience/express their Search For Meaning through the 5 Senses.
The mix was created from stock sound effects.
This is a soundscape mix that I created for the 2013 Search For Meaning Book Festival sponsored by Seattle University's School of Theology and Ministry. The Festival had an interactive installation which allowed participants to experience/express their Search For Meaning through the 5 Senses. The mix was created from stock sound effects.
Ok... the secret is out. I am Aetheric Field.
I recently worked with Christopher Riley to create album art for his Ember Music release "CiViLX - Theory."
I have created another piece of album art for my friend and label-mate Darren Borg.
The Restoration of Abbie’s is the first full-length album from Darren and is an impressive collection of deep, atmospheric electronica. This follow up to 2012′s The Beginning and the End EP sees Darren pushing his signature sound in new directions. The album is available now via Bandcamp.
I am happy to announce my latest release Isaz, a 4 track EP featuring experiments in sound, processed loops and field recordings. All of these tracks were conceptualized, recorded, programmed, and mixed between January and September 2009. Available now as a free download from Bandcamp.
01. This is just my voice
This is just a looping, processed sample of me saying "this is just my voice"
02. Cargo
Processed sample of a train running through Carkeek Park in Seattle, WAUSA. This track was recorded with an M-Audio MicroTrack II digital recorder using the standard t-microphone. I used Ableton Live 6 for processing through an Auto Filter, a Simple Delay and a Resonator.
03. Batavia
This is the soundtrack to a memory. Flying in my fathers small plane from Buffalo. NY to Batavia, IL. when I was 6 years old. A mix of excitement and utter dread. I feel like I captured those feelings in this track.
04. Eye
Original Experimental Music/Sound (by Kurt Lorenz) made completely on the iPhone using BeatMaker, NLogSynth, and iGendyn. (Slo-Mo Vocalizations are from the videos audio track.) Each app was recorded directly into an audio channel in Ableton Live and some basic mixing/compression applied. This track is the soundtrack to an experimental film I created entitled "Eye" you can see the video below or here: www.vimeo.com/5243888
eye from Kurt Lorenz on Vimeo.
Here is my latest track, "Swirl" Æthelwulf (Noble Wolf) Mix, a remix for Seattle Dreampop duo Golden Gardens. The track is free to download and share...
You can check out their full-length album by visiting the Golden Gardens Bandcamp page.
"Seattle duo Golden Gardens waft somewhere among Julee Cruise's silky lullabies, Cranes' tremulous hymns, and Slowdive's aquatic symphonies." - Dave Segal, The Stranger
"Soothing dream-pop at its best." - Seattle Weekly
I have recently had a design accepted at thenounproject.com. "The Noun Project collects, organizes and adds to the highly recognizable symbols that form the world's visual language, so we may share them in a fun and meaningful way."
You can see my design for MIDI here
Last year I was asked by Imogen Heap to contribute my short film "Bees" to her Love The Earth Concert/Film performance at the Royal Albert Hall. Well the film is finally coming to the public and will debut on April 22, 2012 (Earth Day) at 7.30 pm BST in the form of a 90 Minute Live Event from Imogen's Garden.
For more information about this event and to RSVP for the live stream:
I was interviewed with my Ember Music co-founder Bill Bendrot (MobiusB) on this weeks edition of the Solipsistic Nation Podcast.
Solipsistic NATION was a two hour radio show that broadcast the very best of all genres of electronic music from Free Radio San Diego 96.9 FM every Sunday night from 10 PM – 12 AM.
Sadly, after a year of making the airwaves of San Diego throb with the sounds of solipsistic NATION show host Bazooka Joe had to give the show up due to time constraints. A little over a year later he was back in action, only this time by podcasting the show once a week!
If you want to be sure to receive each episode we recommend subscribing to the solipsistic NATION feed. If you have the latest version iTunes on your computer, click here to subscribe.
As co-founder, curator, art director and artist for Ember Music, I am very proud to announce that our first official release, Ember Music – Volume 1, is now available on Bandcamp at http://embermusic.bandcamp.com.
The compilation features works by Murat Esmer, Carl Sagan’s Ghost, Known Rebel, Akisma, Kurt Lorenz, Mr. Sandbags, Saffron Slumber, Savaran, Nordmach, TraisKin, Slaphappy Mortician and MobiusB.
The album is available for purchase for $6.99 through Bandcamp with a full streaming preview available.
Ember Music Volume 1 will be available through iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, Spotify, and other digital stores in the coming weeks. We will also have a limited number of physical CDs available for sale in February 2011.
I am proud to announce that my short film "Bees" was hand selected by Grammy Award winning artist Imogen Heap to appear in her concert/film/dvd project Love the Earth. The film debuted at Royal Albert Hall on November 5th, 2010 and streamed live to more than 480,000 viewers. For more information about the project visit their website: http://www.lovetheearthfilm.org/
or watch this:
Bees from Kurt Lorenz on Vimeo.
Sunday afternoon in my sunny Seattle garden. Listen close, slow-mo bee sounds and bird song, and plenty of slow-mo camera noise too! I was really planning on composing a nice haunting melody to go with these great visuals but the raw sound played back at 25% the original speed was just too cool to mess with.
I have just completed a music video project for Summer Rain Recordings artist IG88. The video is made with found footage from the Prelinger Collection at archive.org. Edited in FCE4.
"Cardboard Houses" by IG88 from Kurt Lorenz on Vimeo.
"Cardboard Houses" by IG88
Release Date: May 31st 2010
Catalog Number: SRR-075
IG88′s self titled EP is his debut release on Summer Rain. Beautiful, haunting melodies, occasional vocals, and glitched, elaborate beats bind to culminate in a blissful collection of tracks that inspire and soothe.
Visit http://www.summerrainrecordings.net
Video compiled and edited by Kurt Lorenz
http://www.kurtlorenz.com
Ember Music logo and background by Kurt LorenzA few months ago I was having a discussion with a Twitter friend (MobiusB a.k.a Bill Bendrot) about the state of the music industry and trying to promote oneself in this web-centric culture. I was searching for a net label to help promote my music and Bill had some powerful insight. He had had some horrible experiences with net labels trying to steal publishing rights out from under him and thought that there had to be a better way. We decided to start an artist run netlabel that focuses on electronic composition and production. Ember Music was born.
Our goals are:
We both hand picked 5-10 artists and asked them to participate... all of the responses were very enthusiastic.
We hope to expand the scope of the site to include visual art and physical goods as well as the music. Come to the site and don't forget to follow/fan/like us all over the web...
You can find Ember Music at these sites: