Karl D – Funk Phenomena

The lead melody was originally concocted with lyrics in mind; however, they’ve never left the confines of my brain.  About half were since forgotten anyway.

Karl D – Afraid of What You’ll Say

“Love Theme”, like several songs I’ve produced, was inspired by what I imagine I might have written for a film score.

Karl D – Love Theme

12/26/09 – Whoops, forgot the download link. -KD

This first track is from about 6 years ago, I suppose.  You may not think I might be crazy enough to do hardhouse covers of Sevendust songs, but you’d be wrong.

Sevendust has been for a long time one of my favorite metal bands, and Black has always been one of my favorite songs.  I’ve always been surprised to hear how much people liked this song.  Even people not really into electronic music or Sevendust have reported really enjoying this song.

Karl D – Black

12/26/09 – Whoops, forgot the download link. -KD

At the time I created this track, I wanted to “prove to myself” I could conjure a competent, contemporary hardhouse track.  I’d immersed myself in lots of the Tidy Trax catalog during that time, and the song mirrors that influence with the presence of the famous Hoover sound, the klubby bass, and the hard, fast sampling and scratching.

Karl D – Rock the House

Spending as much time as I did reading the book, it became a natural source of inspiration for me.  Unfortunately, this inspiration came about in the form of terrible recurring nightmares about Hell, damnation, and the Devil.  A day came in about 2001, when I was just getting into music production, that I was able to focus all of this emotion into a song that I called “Why I Hate Dante”.  I finished the song in an afternoon, and I don’t remember doing much of it.  Looking back, creating the song was somewhat of a mystical experience for me.

This song remains to be some of my best work.  It has a strong trip-hop groove that evolves throughout the song until it finally reaches critical mass and turns into a thrilling drill and bass monster.  This is one of my longer works but I guarantee the tension justifies the entire length of the track.

This was a focused and uncharacteristically angry song. Like most songs, this comes with a story:

I remember writing this shortly after the US invaded Iraq in 2003.  I remember seeing Bush on TV repeating that God was on our side and that He told him that invading Iraq was the right thing to do.  I don’t want to get into politics too much on this site, but I remember thinking that if that’s what America considered sound moral judgment and embracing what was considered “the light”, then I would rather embrace the darkness.

When I made it, I wanted the focus of “Turbulence” to be the keyboards in the background.  The bassline that rolls through the whole track holds the whole track together, and the keyboards add tension until the big grinding synth comes in in the middle. 

The name “Turbulence” came from the helicopter and airplane sound FX laced throughout the track, which add an incredible amount of atmosphere.  Generally I don’t use a lot of sound effects in production, but in this case, I knew they belonged from the beginning.  I think it was one of the first elements I put in. 

Before there was Existential Funk, “Things You’ll Need to Know”, or randombeats.com, there was Red Time.

Red Time started as a dream I had in 2002.  I can still recall the dream very vividly, and it had to do with moving backwards in time somehow.  I knew this was called “Red Time” because someone in the dream told me.

In the dream, I heard music.  The very next day, I put that same music into a song.

Karl D – Red Time Original Version

In the small circle of friends that I distributed my music to at the time, this was one of the most popular songs. The concept was just as popular.

I hoped to one day write a short story, as well as a film based on Red Time.  In the time between 2003 and 2004, I worked almost exclusively on the soundtrack to the film.  Because the music was so important to the idea of Red Time, I wanted the soundtrack done first.

Sadly, with a budding “real job”, my time for screenwriting went way down, and the project never really got started.  However, the soundtrack was nearly complete.  I nearly released it as a full album(despite the film not being complete), but I felt that it was too short.

Because of the new format of randombeats.com, I felt now was the perfect time to let this “in to the wild.”  The album is slow, melodic trip-hop mixed with house and breakbeat.  While I was telling people about the project back in ’03, the multi-talented Matt Wilson of screen and stage volunteered the following illustration for a cover.  I felt it summed it up nicely.

Click on the image to download the entire ZIP file of Red Time: A Movie Not Yet Made, including the original and remixed versions of the song that started it all, along with 7 other great tracks.  The full download will also be in the Downloads section.

I mentioned in a previous post that one of my major influences is Eurodance, and nothing shows that better than “No Greater Love”.  I believe I composed this track in late 2001/early 2002.  This song is significant for several reasons:

• At the time, I used a different kind of sequencing software which was nearly impossible for a serious musician to use, however I had grown very proficient at using it, despite it’s limitations.  The sample based software only had 3 “tracks” which consisted of 16 positions each where you could place notes or drum samples, for a total of 48 total notes or drums in a bar.
• This was one of the first real melodic songs I ever composed.  I had done some other things, but they were mostly beaty hardhouse.
• It eventually rose up on independent music site SoundClick’s Euro chart to a top position of #51 out of 1,820.

So, dear listener, I give you, the original and remixed versions of “No Greater Love”.

Karl D – No Greater Love

Karl D – No Greater Love(Remix)