If you notice between the last mix and this one was a five-year gap, six years from the last Libations and Oscillations mix. It’s not that the duo of Tonebreaker and Noctum split, or that I attempted to “retire” from music again. It’s just that sometimes life happens. During lockdown orders in this extremely unusual year, Tonebreaker reached out to me with an idea. A mixtape to raise funds for charity. I was completely down with this idea. The charity we found was Music by Black Composers, a project of the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation.
On a personal note as we explored this mix we also decided to lay the Libations & Oscillations moniker to rest. So much had changed since the last time we touched that moniker. This time we released this simply as Tonebreaker and Noctum.
Music is one of the tapestries by which humanity tells its stories. From Congo Square in New Orleans to CBGB in New York, personal expression and culture have always been socialized to a soundtrack. As contemporary electronic musicians ourselves, we wanted to raise money for this charity to honor the rich and diverse musical roots that came before.
Libations & Oscillations - The Cracked Chronometer
Typically during the burning of an effigy at a burn event there is no music. Not that it’s a law written in stone but it’s something that people had come to think of like a tradition. At the request of the effigy designer, Dottie Spearman, we challenged this line of thinking. Several things happened here the first being one of the most complicated mixsets either Tonebreaker or myself have ever put together and an L&O Cocktail at the end. Which is one of the strangest things I’ve ever put together. However, I still love it for it’s dark and cinematic feel.
In this tale, Dr. Dirigible (Tonebreaker) and The Outlaw Saint (Joseph Noctum) have affixed an ancient Duergar chronometer to their airship, the S.S. Discord. According to legend, this device will allow them to sail the temporal seas firsthand. However, upon entering the tesseract, the chronometer cracks and sends our band of ne’er-do-well’s skittering through the fabric of spacetime. The resulting adventure through past, present, and future is transcribed in sound for your listening enjoyment. We used all of our skills mixing, sampling, remixing and producing this arrangement to make a cinematic tour that spans a myriad of musical styles. Marrying the world of acoustic and electronic music, we hope you enjoy this auditory accompaniment to the stunning visuals, performances, pyro and ultimately, our 2012 burn
Joseph Noctum - Pyropolis 2011: The Bad Boogie
The second in my Pyropolis series. This time instead of looking to my past I had by this point had set up a new live performance method. Instead of DJ’ing with vinyl, or USB’s as I had learned for last year. Now I was armed with a laptop, and MIDI controller to string together a DJ set with more control over the tracks, EQs, and FX than ever. While the sets were live and raw and filled with additional live chops and layered effects I would still make a studio version for release. Not the same as the live version but a pleasant memory for those who were there. This mix also includes two of my “Calculated Crunk” mash-ups I was known for during this time in my performances.
Libations & Oscillations - Professor Seaglitch's Isle of Aural Decadence
The very first Libations & Oscillations mix. This one is a special mix as it cemented my longest-running musical partnership. It started with Tonebreaker wanting my help in a remix project he was working on. It then moved to us finishing an original track he was working on. That track became “Going Baroque”. The next thing we knew we were working on a live set to play together. This first one was not played as a duo as he had a DJ reunion show in Dallas to play and I had a show on the beach for Ambient Campout to play. So separated by 550 ish miles on the opposite ends of Texas we played this set. Later we released it on the nurevolution studios podcast. This marked the beginning of the journey by Dr. Dirigible (Tonebreaker) and the Outlaw Saint (Joseph Noctum).