This all started from one little idea to use sex as the basis for music instruments. And a deep love of experimentation. Why do it? Why not.

(original story from EQ Magazine)

The Sex Album was very challenging for everyone involved on so many levels. Conceptually i wanted it to center around sex but from a completely different perspective than mainstream pop. The songs go under the surface of emotion and explore themes which are very real to many people. Using real sex as the instrument was just a punctuation to this, albeit a very important one. People sometimes ask me why the sounds aren't more blatant. The answer is that i didn't want do compose a porn soundtrack. The concepts aren't superficial so why should the accompanying sounds be?

Technically speaking it therefore required a very different approach than your average record. In certain cases such as "Sarajevo" and "Boy in Black" i had the lyrics and melody written first. While most people would then rely on typical instruments to help it evolve, Ivan Evangelista and i had to sit down and construct a sound palette from scratch. For example, "Boy in Black" needed a percussive, ripping sound in the chorus and we felt that velcro (as used in wrist restraints) might provide the necessary material. To capture this type of sound we used a Crown PZM mic, a Dan Alexander Audio Neve 1272-Style Mic Pre, Digi 002 Sound card, into a Mac laptop. In other cases we used inexpensive consumer gear (Mini Lav, Phone Mic) that we modified to capture internal body and mechanical sounds.

Once we harnessed the raw sound we transfered the material over to our studio where the music was ultimately constructed and mixed using Cubase and Digital Performer. Most of the sounds were processed through a standard battery of plug ins (pitch shifting, time compression/expansion, distortion, eq, compression, etc). When we needed more intricate sound design (or were simply tired of tweaking knobs) we called upon our favorite frenchman, Jean-Luc Sinclair.

His sound design centered around Reaktor and Csound, but also Logic and to a lesser extent, Reason. Our goal was to tread a fine line between recognizable and musical sounds. In many instances I wanted the source material to show through subtly, lending a unique edge to the music. "The One Over There is All Mine" is a good example of this. "Intro" and "Exit" were performed almost entirely live within Reaktor, based on feedback instruments inspired by the works of David Tudor and Brian Eno. Several samples were loaded in Reaktor and processed through a network of feedback loops, delays, filters, reverbs and a few other effects. The output was recorded straight to disk and later edited for the album.

On Sweet16, most of the sounds were generated in Csound and later brought into Cubase, and then Logic. Csound was very useful in terms of being able to generate interesting textures out of very short samples, sometimes only a few milliseconds long. A lot of granular processes were used to that extent, as well as some more hybrid physical modeling techniques, such as the use of FOFs, meant to emulate the human voice. By loading our own waveforms into these parameters we were able to create some interesting hybrid sounds, used also on "The One Over There is All Mine".

During the middle section of "Look Pretty" a lot of the material was processed through Reaktor instruments running as plug ins within Logic. We made a few ensembles based around some of the granular delays and building blocks that Reaktor has to offer to generate eerie instruments that could be played from a keyboard in real time.

Most of the album was ultimately adapted to a live show, with more traditional instrumentation pulled in. A whirlwind of press, a tour, remixes, and a few Billboard charts later…the art continues in different forms. New albums, films, photography.

Never stop creating.