♫♪  Ben Zimmerman - Mains EP

Ben Zimmerman demonstrated his affinity for different electronic styles on last year’s archival release from Software, The Baltika Years, but obviously some of that record’s appeal also comes from the fact that Zimmerman literally (not literally) had to speak in a soft, seductive voice any time he wanted to persuade and compose via the now quite discontinued Tandy DeskMate software. Such was the tediousness of creating electronic music using obscure programs prior to the PC’s ubiquity, so in the current age, when certain hardware and software are capable of doing everything but fixing breakfast for you right out of the box, the pressure is especially on traditional electronic musicians to appeal to the pure listener.

2010 was the year that Zimmerman created the five witch house-influenced tracks featured on his new Mains EP, and a Yamaha QY70, M-Audio MIDI controller, and Behringer Tweaklizer essentially sum up the tools used to explore yet another sub genre. I’ll go out on a limb and say that the process wasn’t quite as painful this time around, almost 10 years post-DeskMate experiments. Sample and/or purchase the EP here via hardvapour label H.V.R.F.

Chocolate Grinder

CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

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