Conrad Brameld: Guitars & Strings, Vocals, Keyboards, Percussion
Sam Davis: Keyboards, Accordion, Sax, Percussion
When I was at university my friend Conrad & I used to improvise music between keyboards, Conrad’s guitar and voice, my sax and accordion. We used to record some of these improvisations onto
cassette tape and eventually computer.
By 2010 we were getting a bit more serious about it. We would record improvised music into a computer and splice it, layer it, reverse it, EQ it, add echo, flange it, pitch bend and much, much more. We also embellished it with audio samples from the public domain (A Coach for Cinderella,
The Dick Van Dyke Show) and other royalty free samples. Once we had enough tracks we joined them together and split them into 26 CD/MP3 tracks. This became
Prepared Axe, LoFi’s first LP. We distributed for
free on the internet through
Facebook and Soundcloud and got airtime on the internet radio station
XRP Radio.
Immediately after releasing Prepared Axe we started work on another album called The Taste of Noise. In this album we focussed more on the manipulation process. We did not rely on recognisable audio samples such as The Dick Van Dyke Show, instead sampling obscure instruments such as Conrad’s barbat (Asian lute). We also created drones out
of vocals and recorded music with the intention of reversing. The Taste of Noise was prepared for release in late 2010 and released to the internet soon after in 2011.
You will need
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following tracks:
LoFi - Prepared Axe
download
LoFi - The Taste of
Noise
download