2008 Zumbi do Mato: Toma, Figurão - in Portuguese; to download, click "DOWNLOAD GRÁTIS"
2008 Belles Alliances
| 1. Let's Fly | 10:35 |
| 2. Moebius Tape | 16:57 |
| 3. Cat in the Blender | 4:15 |
| 4. Nightlife in Mars | 7:40 |
| 5. Arcade Times | 1:59 |
| 6. Mindbender | 6:48 |
| 7. Icecream Waves | 7:11 |
| 8. Inside the Machine | 20:14 |
| Total: | 75:39 |
2011
and 
to change the track!
| Recorded: | 2008, December - 2009, January |
| Released: | 26.03.2011 - Digital audio download via Bandcamp - Independent release |
| Instrument: | TS-404 V1.05 Beta software synthesizer |
| Graphics: | Graphics and booklet design by Gustavo Jobim Cover photo: unknown (source: Internet) |
| Reviews: |
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2009-2010: A musician trapped in a day job: The making of Trapped in a Day Job
The music in this album was entirely created with a small (about 250 kB) software synthesizer, the TS-404 V1.05 Beta. This synth is actually an ensemble of four very simple synthesizers, each played by an independent step sequencer. Depending on how you use it, you can layer these four modules to create rich, fat lead lines, or complex rhythms. Then you can export this melodic phrase or drum beat as an audio file, and work with this patch on other software to create different arrangements.
That's what the TS-404 is supposed to be used for. However, I began experimenting with it by just leaving the synth playing nonstop and changing the parameters on the fly. After playing for a while, I noticed I was actually creating rhythmic, minimalistic music, with everchanging melodies, beats and timbres. So to have a recording of a new musical piece, all I needed to do was to press "Record" on an audio processing software and carefully play the TS-404. So the repetition of the short loops the TS-404 produced was the foundation for all the music in this album, and each piece is largely a calculated improvisation, or "instant composition", a method I use very often.
As I'm always inspired by the pioneers of electronic music, the retro sounds produced by the TS-404 suited very well that particular period in late 2008, when, after finishing work on a big project, I wanted to play different sounds and had been listening to a lot of Cluster. Those sounds also evoked my long gone videogame-filled afternoons - videogame soundtracks were the first musical pieces that caught my attention at an early age, and still today I greatly appreciate a well-done game soundtrack. So, directly inspired by Cluster's Moebius, the first piece I recorded for this album was the Moebius Tape.
The computer used for this work was the one I had on my job desk, so for about two weeks, in the turn of the years 2008/2009, whenever I had some free time I'd be recording those pieces. In the following months I edited some of the music, and created some additional sounds. Being a musician that needs to have a day job in order to pay the bills, and considering how those pieces were created, the album title Trapped in a Day Job fit like a glove.
The graphics for this album were made in the "trapped" concept: mazes, a different one for each piece; and a monolithic skyscraper representing the idea of the title. The album was recorded inside a similar building. Ned Netherwood (author of the Was Ist Das? site) was kind enough of reviewing the music before its release; his review was also included in the booklet.
In 2009-2010 I divided my time between touching these pieces up, studying piano and compiling old studio leftovers and unreleased pieces. Eventually the audio production for Trapped was finished, and some of these pieces were presented at the [now defunct] myspace page, but the album as a whole laid dormant for a long time, until now.
In January 2011, the single Cat in the Blender/Arcade Times was officially released as a free download. And Trapped in a Day Job was finally released in March 26th.
The final results are relentless, slowly unfolding electronic music pieces in several different styles. Patient ears will be rewarded.
- Gustavo Jobim, March/2011 (revised in August/2011)
Trapped in a Day Job was literally conceived during Gustavo Jobim’s working hours by means of a small (only 250 kilobytes) software synthesizer, TS-404 V1.05 Beta. This software is built around four layered independent sequencers, each assigned to a small, also independent, synthesizer. So the TS-404 is aimed at creating short rhythmic loops or fat synth lead lines, which the musician can use for other arrangements. After some experimentation on this software, the Brazilian tones sculptor discovered its full potential within long minimalist musical pieces. And so Trapped in a Day Job got out of its embryonic state. Using the four sequencers ensemble for both rhythmic and melodic patterns, in a continuous, repetitive play, Gustavo Jobim concocted quite a syncretic album where the music leaves the way to a palette of videogames tones which roll in circle through a pleiad of metallic pulsations.
"Let’s Fly" opens this eclectic album of Gustavo Jobim with heavy and resonant pulsations which evolve on a long minimalist structure liven up by chords which turn in loops. Chords which subtly stretch their harmonies on a hard, stroboscopic and robotic tempo where heavy metallic pulsations sound as extraterrestrials' suction cups in a kind of techno that Kraftwerk would deliver on vitamins boosted with LSD. And if there is a key point in this extreme pandemonium is this subtle permutation in harmonies which untie us from a redundant geometrically musical figure.
Longer, "Moebius Tape" is also much harmonious. The musical skeleton always rests on metallic beatings which resound to forever and a day, but the limpid sequences pour with a more beautiful fluidity and form a strange paradoxical harmony with its multiplied doubloons which shape a curious automated ode, making forgot its pulsating metallic skeleton.
Afterwards we fall in a series of short tracks where are hiding beautiful jewels, as "Cat in the Blender" of which the naming says everything. We really have the impression of hearing a cat mew of pain on a heavy, metallic and pulsating rhythm. The harmonious and rhythmic structures are in constants permutations, giving thus more wealth to Trapped in a Day Job. "Nightlife in Mars" goes a bit out of the pulsating structure to offer an odd musical structure, taken directly out of video games, as on "Arcade Times" and its frantically loops, which recall me Plastikman’s musical automate and minimalist world.
After the brief interlude of "Arcade Times" we dive into "Mindbender" and its semi spectral and semi alien structure where chords spin of a symmetric way in a minimalism universe of discord. If I ventured, I would dare a comparison between Mike Oldfield and Conrad Schnitzer. "Icecream Waves" is the softest track of Trapped in a Day Job where chords swirl without constraints on a delicate structure reminding Richard Pinhas' universe on East-West.
Beautiful and melodious, but always minimalist and robotic, less violent than "Let’s Fly" and less harmonious than "Moebius Tape", "Inside the Machine" ends this musical essay with a long track with loops and chords as well pulsating as repetitive on a structure to subtle unexpected developments. Permutations strongly nuanced which amaze because of their spontaneity and unpredictability. If it can seem long at the beginning, it subtly changes and evolves for its entire duration. And these fine changes that we didn’t expected make the charms of Trapped in a Day Job.
I read on Gustavo's site that this album would have been a continuity of Cluster works, which incidentally I don’t really know to do such a comparison. But I find many other references which have jumped to my ears, such Daft Punk, Con Man (Conrad Schnitzler), Plastikman and Kraftwerk. Trapped in a Day Job is certainly a strange opus where the musicality can seem doubtful, even if unmistakably present, which demonstrates that from a simple thingy we can manage to create great things. For Kraftwerk fans, it’s a must. And for those who are of curious nature, it’s an album which is amply worth the time we take to listen to, specially when it’s free and available at his site.
Apparently (*) recorded using the desktop that Gustavo uses at his day job, this album is unsurprisingly escapist.
The first impressions are that this is how Cluster could have sounded after the 70s if they had had a little more confidence and a nicer touch of the zeitgeist.
However, when you get closer to it, the details and the production betray it as a product of a more modern age. This is more how Cluster would sound if The Doctor had taken them in his TARDIS to now and left them not in a studio but with a PC and someone who knew how to use it.
Strange comparisons aside, Gustavo is a man who can put soul into the machine. For instance, on 'Nightlife In Mars' he fulfils the old Detroit ambition of sounding like Kraftwerk playing James Brown.
Gustavo can make his machine fly and he takes it to some weird places. Like acid house gone wrong, he takes an electro groove and puts some very warped sounds on top of it. Nicely weird electronic.
(*) Allegedly, anecdote published without prejudice.
