HEVYDEVY FORUMS

Just thought I'd post some links up for my band Ektoise (formerly Purity Device - had to change our name)

We're a bit of an odd idea, we basically have a concept of melding any forms of music that we appreciate into this one big diverse thing that expressed all manner of thoughts and feelings rather than one specific set. So since 2007 we've made music containing Alternative Rock, Electronica, Doom, Trip-Hop, Shoegaze, Avant-garde, Drone, Ambient, Power Electronics, Hardcore, Folk, IDM, Dance, Psychedelia, even some Pop...

When I was in my formative years as a musician, Devin and Nine Inch Nails were the greatest things in the world to me. I think this has made a very big impact on the way I create and produce the music now, as I try to have layers and layers of detail so that depending on what you listen to in the song you hear different things each time. I'm especially into Infinity and Terria, The Downward Spiral and The Fragile so I lean towards pretty intense sound design a lot of the time.

Influences for the band include Coil, Autechre, DJ Krush, Throbbing Gristle, SoiSong, Devin, Massive Attack, Bola, Boards of Canada, Björk, Secret Chiefs 3, Mr Bungle, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos, Bass Communion, Neurosis, Isis, Grails, Cult of Luna, Melvins, Lustmord, Mogwai, Sigur Ros, Tool, Wu-Tang Clan, J Dilla, Monster Magnet, The Mars Volta, Antony and the Johnsons, Nurse With Wound, Sade, Blur, The Beach Boys, Syd Barrett and his Pink Floyd, etc...

I hope you guys like some of this stuff!

http://www.ektoise.com For information, news, photos, gig posters, setlists, links, etc
http://ektoise.bandcamp.com Streaming of our entire catalog, free downloads, purchasables


Cheers!

Greg

I clicked on your myspace link as soon as I read "shoegaze" bit in the description. I developed soft spot for the genre lately (by discovering it, basically). Great music you have there, I love this kind of dreamy stuff.

Thanks, glad you like it! Yeah I got a bit shoegaze obsessed when I got into My Bloody Valentine (even though they disagree with being called shoegaze) and I like really lush sounding stuff so it sort of naturally worked its way into our music. Some of the tracks we're working on at the moment sound even more dream-pop/shoegaze than these ones, I think 'Rain of Sound' is probably the most MBV damaged of this lot

Bruno, just listened to your stuff on myspace (pretty funny page you got, heh) and I really like it! 'Wut' is my favourite, has some lovely synths that remind me of some of the coolest sci-fi moments on Van Halen's 1984 album

Hey dude,

Great to see you back on here again...was wondering what you have been up to recently! Unfortunately I cannot listen to this music at the moment, but I will do so when I get the chance. I am a big MBV fan also and so this sounds like it will be fantastic.

More later...

Goodness me, I just pmed you asking for links to your music and they're staring me in the face below your post Duhhhh

Yes, I had many years in the wilderness without a net connection at home but now I can be a part of the community again

Listening to your stuff now, just as good as I remember it being! So you going to release a CD of this shit? I'd be keen to put something out on my label if you don't have any other plans

Greg Reason wrote:Goodness me, I just pmed you asking for links to your music and they're staring me in the face below your post Duhhhh

Yes, I had many years in the wilderness without a net connection at home but now I can be a part of the community again

Listening to your stuff now, just as good as I remember it being! So you going to release a CD of this shit? I'd be keen to put something out on my label if you don't have any other plans

Ahaa, I just replied to your PM, thanks for that.

The stuff up on those links is mostly silly. I dont consider it a fair representation of what I probably could do, I think. I have lots of ideas I have yet to use. If you want to help me make a release out of this kind of thing, that would be wonderful! Perhaps we can discuss this further elsewhere though, so as not to trample on your thread for your wonderful...

...music! Have just been listening to everything on the SoundCloud site, which is very nifty indeed. The first time I have seen it, seems very cool. Are you paying for this? Much better to show people than any myspace thing.

Really, really enjoying this stuff. As you probably know, I am really enjoying just hearing 'sound' as texture and space, with or without beats or the shapings of music. It's all good. This really appeals to me in both ways as some parts are really musical and articulate and others more spacious and lush. To put these two things together or to provide all points in the contiuum of sound between noise and music and present it as coming from one collective is ambitious and wonderful, and I think you have succeeded in creating something really interesting. (that isn't very well typed out, apologies!).

Do you have an album or plans for one? I'm looking at your website but my laptop is pretty ancient and struggling with multitasking...

SoundCloud is free and quite wonderful, I'm so happy that there's a site like this that lets you put your music up in whatever quality you want (you can upload wavs if you wish). They don't charge you unless you want a total of more than two hours of audio on there, which basically means that any casual user will get by just fine with a free account. The only niggle I have is that the site really isn't anywhere near as customizable as MySpace but it is far superior in audio quality, which is obviously far more important.

As for Purity Device, yeah we have tons of shit out. Our discography is as follows:

2008-07 Purity Device (limited edition EP)
2008-10 Live at the Fringe Bar (limited edition album)
2009-02 The Single Act of Being (album)
2009-03 Live in the Studio (limited edition EP)
2009-04 Building a Home (limited edition demos disk)
2009-05 The Rain (EP)
2009-06 The Snow (EP)
2009-07 The Hail (EP)
2009-10 Live at Club 206 (limited edition EP)
2010-01 The Shine (EP)
2010-03 The Hi-Fi Companion (limited edition EP)
2010-03 Live at Wavell Heights Community Hall (limited edition album)

see the discography on our Facebook page for images and details for each release

The Single Act of Being is basically a mix of every style known to man. That album has Avant-garde, IDM, Ambient, Drone, Rock, Shoegaze, Death Metal, Trip-Hop, Power Electronics/Noise, Psychedelia, even a moderately symphonic track...

The Four Flavours series was devised as follows: The Rain is acoustic oriented material, The Snow is Ambient material, The Hail is Noise material and The Shine is Pop, Rock and Trip-Hop. Each release contains four tracks but the middle two of these are album length.

Those five releases were put out on my label 777 Operations and will be kept in print. All the other stuff was made as limited editions and won't be reprinted. Live at Wavell Heights Community Hall comes out in a few days, I'm looking forward to getting this one out there because it's some seriously evil shit! That was a very dark performance where we focused on our more experimental and ambient material.

I'm working on getting a webstore up with Greedbag, that should be happening within the next month or so. I'll post in here when the store is up, we'll be selling Flac and mp3 downloads as well as physical CDs and tapes (yeah we have cassette tapes

Just posted another handful of tracks at our SoundCloud page ( http://soundcloud.com/puritydevice ) so there's lots more to listen to in high quality and for the time being everything on our page there is downloadable for free so dig in!

Greg Reason wrote:Bruno, just listened to your stuff on myspace (pretty funny page you got, heh) and I really like it! 'Wut' is my favourite, has some lovely synths that remind me of some of the coolest sci-fi moments on Van Halen's 1984 album

That actually sounds cool, once you described it.

I always plan to make something cool, prog, modern and whatnot then end up with something that sounds to me like miscarried attempt at '85 Italo Disco. I'm changing my approach, now I'll be just whacking keys, torturing guitar and observe what will exit the bussiness end of Reaper's master track without any expectations.

Greg Reason wrote:I'm working on getting a webstore up with Greedbag, that should be happening within the next month or so. I'll post in here when the store is up, we'll be selling Flac and mp3 downloads as well as physical CDs and tapes (yeah we have cassette tapes

Will it have any regional restrictions? I'd be glad to buy some downloads, but sadly most of mp3 stores (basically every big one like iTunes or Amazon) don't like my country

Nothing wrong with Italo Disco

No, I don't believe there will be any regional restrictions on our webstore. It will be hosted by Greedbag/State 51 Conspiracy, and the downloadables themselves will be sold via twenty five or so different outlets so I'm sure there'll be at least one amongst the many that will allow you to grab them from Poland. If all that goes ahead and you still can't purchase downloads I'll email you a zip file

Exciting news for us, we've been getting some remixes together for a full length album of reconstructions of material from The Single Act of Being and it's getting to the point where things are wrapping up for mastering. The album is Remix/Reform and it looks like this:



And the really exciting part is we have some absolute legends on here! UK electronic pioneers The Black Dog and Bola have done us mixes and we're fortunate enough to be featured prominently in The Black Dog's new DJ mix, available for free download here:

http://www.factmag.com/2010/04/26/fact- ... black-dog/

A short edit of 'The Thought Police (Bitten by The Black Dog)' is the very first track in the mix! Anyone into electronic music should definitely grab this mix cause it kicks some serious ass! TBD have been going since the late '80s and they've got their shit down!

Hey guys

It's been a long time since I updated this I know; we had some dramas and had to change our name from Purity Device to Ektoise but we got back on the horse and kept on schedule with our planned releases so I thought I should post some info.

First thing's first - you can download our debut album for free at http://ektoise.bandcamp.com in whatever format you like - everything from 24bit FLAC to 320kps mp3 and all the lossy encodes below that.

Secondly, our remix releases are available at the same place and feature Bola, The Black Dog, Nic McConaghy, Tigermoth, etc... These guys have all given us wonderful mixes and we're really happy with how solid it all turned out.

Hope you like the music!

Hurrah for bandcamp, I can buy shit from there! Bought the remix album minute ago, that Black Dog's remix was fantastic.

Cheers man! Yeah we were well chuffed when we got The Black Dog mix in the email; didn't know what to expect and when they cranked out a ten odd minute epic we were blown away

Don't forget to grab the free album too!