Malcolm
Connor
bassist

“Meditations for Isolation” is a series of works created during the Covid 19 lockdowns and was a creative outlet that proved to be both cathartic and soothing for the multiple years of almost no live performance. Creating within these restrictions led to the discovery of an entirely new sound, experimenting with effects, instrumentation, microphones, and recording software. Each piece originated through improvising and layering into a loop pedal with either double bass, electric bass, guitar, or some combination of the three, with and without effects pedals. Once a piece had taken shape, the loop pedal was recorded through multiple effects that would be manipulated during recording. Essentially, this music was improvised and recorded live off the floor, with certain pieces having instruments recorded and layered in after the initial creation. For example: piano, voice, field recordings, guitar, and bass may be later tracked and recorded over the core loop and effects composition. All compositions were performed and recorded by Malcolm Connor, with Belinda Corpuz (www.belindacorpuz.com) performing the piano parts on two tracks. Dave Plowman of Patchwork studios, who in addition to professionally mixing and mastering, added depth and texture with an array of pieces of studio hardware to create new qualities of textures within the tracks. For example, many tracks  were sent to a chorus/flanger/phaser preset on an Evantide H3000 Harmonizer, recorded back into the computer at 100% wet effected signal and then blended into the track. This is referred to as parallel processing, where the original audio remains intact but is augmented by the effected sound. These layers were used to add a sense of movement and grandiosity to the already lush recordings.
The 14 pieces on this album were selected from dozens of recordings made between 2020 and 2022.