Associated Sine Tone Services is a new conceptual collaboration between analog oscillator wielders Jeremy Young (Montreal, CAN), Nicolas Bernier (Montreal, CAN) and Rutger Zuydervelt (Schiedam, NL). This record, released by Flag Day Recordings, was entirely generated using sine wave oscillators and an array of electronic filters, stacks, and processing.

This isn’t a review, it’s “news!” (But it’s also kind of not not a review?)

I will use this space on occasion to share news of releases I’m part of and this is something I’m not only a part of, but extremely proud of.

The idea for Associated Sine Tone Services came in a dream. I dreamt that myself, Nicolas, and Rutger were all on stage together at Café OTO in London (cliché, I know), dressed in lab coats, wielding only sine wave oscillators in a collaborative set.

I woke up and was almost jealous of myself because that felt just so freaking cool! I then emailed Nico and Rutger to tell them about the dream, and half-jokingly mentioned how fun it would be to make something like this, an album of only sine waves, and each of them agreed. Shortly after, I started putting loops and wave patterns together and sending them over, and slowly this album began taking shape!

I guess the dream (kind of) came true!

Here, take a listen:

One thing I love about this record is how truly and clearly all three of our individual voices shine through in these tracks. Call me crazy, but for an album composed entirely of sine waves with electronic filters and processing, these sounds are imbued with an enormous wealth of personality. At least I hear them like that.

The exquisitely detailed sound design that continually delights the headphone spectrum belongs to professor Bernier. While the pop-ambient organ-sounding sine waves are a thing of beauty crafted in Zuydervelt’s own hands. And the bendy sine melodies are very much where I’m at right now in my oscillator sound.

And that only gets us through the first couple of tracks. There’s so much to love about this record, and even for me, every time I put it on I hear new things that have alchemically appeared out of nowhere. It’s a pretty minimal suite of electronic pieces, but there’s definitely no shortage of things to discover in here.

I find the nature of collaboration fascinating.

On the one hand, artists whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with for a number of years feel like extensions of my own brain sometimes, as the creative relationship in this case is one in which I can often predict what the other person is thinking. There’s an intimacy when you create something with someone over a long period of time, like a sibling, like unconditional love, and like telepathic communication. Collaborating in this way, I feel confident in my role and how my sound or efforts fit with theirs into an overall vision.

On the other hand, collaborating with an artist for the first time feels energized with possibility and frightening somehow. Sometimes you wait for lightning to strike, sometimes you have to make compromises which at the time of making feel huge, and we take leaps of faith in the hopes that those compromises were the right choice in the end. Collaborating on an open-ended project will in these cases almost always surprise and delight me after it’s all said and done. I still listen to my record with Shinya Sugimoto and Julia Kent (two first-time collaborators at that time) called Total Fiction, and wonder how the heck we made something so beautiful and self-assured!

I’m ruminating on this aspect of composition and production here specifically because, well not only is Associated Sine Tone Services a first time collaboration that has yet to cease surprising me, but because of how effortless this entire process felt.

I usually dread remotely sending banks of tracks back and forth for months. A lot of music is made that way these days but it’s not necessarily “fun.” In fact it feels very solitary. I find the combination of hours spent producing by myself in my studio with the added pressure of needing to meet other peoples’ deadlines excruciating.

And yet… This was nothing like that. I sent some tracks, Nicolas responded with some tracks about a month later, and then Rutger combined them and added his own sounds into the mix and sent them back. Then we initiated a “Round 2” whereby I actually started mixing them together for real, I added a few more simple elements and the guys did as well. And that was basically it.

Nicolas and Rutger are both extremely efficient creative geniuses. Which is unique. Nico a university teacher with a family, and not a ton of time, has learned to be highly productive in short bursts of time. And Rutger is a master of balancing handfuls of projects at the same time, from design projects to dance and film scores to his own audio productions, all with a Dutch-born sense of time and accountability.

Hence, I felt like a spectator throughout the process of making this record, watching my professional idols at work in real time. And I’m so thankful for that experience.

One last preview track for you to enjoy:

Please check out Associated Sine Tone Services’ self-titled debut album, and please check out and support the incredible catalog of Flag Day Recordings while you’re at it:

Listen and purchase here, please.