Tampered Suit / USA / RE 2026
For his second full-length album, Derek White crafts a peculiar world of sound where his cheap, broken acoustic guitars and woody percussive polyrhythms are joined with sensory environments, soft static, and abstract samples (which were performed in a jerky musique concrète fashion using midi synthesis.)
Tiki is at times folky, tribe-like music, exhibiting a grounding, meditative sentiment. The pieces have the tendency to morph and flourish, sometimes falling into meaningless chants such as Eric Dolphy's voice humorously stuck in a loop about his favorite classical composers. Tiki highlights the risks associated with a greedy, technology-driven world filled with wifi signals, which may be impacting natural ecosystems. These concepts are depicted in the extended piece titled "island birds coping with wifi."
White's concerns led him to transform Tiki into a fantasy realm where nature ultimately prevails. The cover illustration portrays an abstract world, featuring tribesmen clutching their spears to fend off malevolent spirits, which float among electrical musical circuitry and patch cables.
The tonal quality of this body of work is low-fidelity, yet it is benevolently infused with a satisfying and non-abrasive character, which functions as a magical dust for the listener's ears, revealing an ASMR and hemi-sync hypnosis effect.
The songs were composed in-the-moment using a portable tascam recorder primarily using internal microphones to avoid having to compose the pieces in a confined studio setting. The instruments were tracked in serene locations such as a couch, porch, or garden.
The guitars were tuned by ear in accordance with White's immediate emotions, and percussive sounds were played without metronomes to capture the human touch.
Once the foundation was recorded, White then over-laced samples, (which were sourced either from his record collection, cellphone captures of everyday life sounds, as well as hallucinogenic sounds harvested from invasive algorithmic sludge from his social media feeds.)
White declares:
"Since internet algorithms are becoming more invasive, I decided to extract, and exploit remnants from my social media feeds and sample them into synthesized bits for my own use. This felt like my way of protesting back at the intrusive nature of tech platforms. They study our tastes and proclivities; and at times they get things right, other times terribly wrong."
"I also used this album as a practice in experimental equalization techniques to extract and reveal fascinating hidden harmonic undertones and artifacts from field recordings. The earth is always humming mysterious songs, and sometimes it feels like you can uncover other dimensions by utilization of surgical equalization. (which can be heard in the opening track "merging offices.") Within the malfunctioning office printer machines which were sampled, there is a deep tranquil harmonic melody which hums within the body of that sound."
"Life, work, offices, cities, background noise...the noise of my child's cartoons.. the anxieties of global collapse and uncertain times..it's all quite overstimulating. The creative process of this album served as an artistic endeavor to document my recurring days and transform the sounds into an asymmetrical soundscape.
Tiki represents White's depiction of tribe music, combined with everyday noises that are drawn into a vacuum and remodelled into a distinctive form of contemporary art."
file under: "cyclone folk"
recommended listening: headphones, background noise.