Christ, I've just bought another piece of studio gear. It was either that or hours of bloody, self-lacerating masturbation. I spent three hours today trying to set up something in my studio that should have been very simple. I won't bore you with the details, because they are stupid, but it was a routing configuration that should have been very easy to set up. When I was done I needed some relief, so I bought something I already have. You read that correctly. I bought an effects unit that I already own - the Alesis Quadraverb. If you own two you can call it an Octaverb if you use them in serial.
I had given it to CS at one point along with some other even more generous gifts. He has never quite forgiven me for taking it back, but I made a mistake by giving it to him. It has this one very specific use - shoegaze reverb - and if you happen to love that sound then this machine is a good way to accomplish it. With two units you can achieve this other thing - serial distortion fields - that only a completely lonely lunatic who did too many drugs in the 90s would love. It relies on the Taj Mahal preset and overdriving the input of the second device with the output of the first. The ready-made ambience of angst.
So, my precious, I will have you.
In fairness, I should record 7-8 minutes of this reverb sound and send it to CS, just so he won't think that he's missing out on anything he might have liked or cared about. I am entirely certain that I can get him recording on his home computer in a way that he would enjoy much more than this box in a matter of minutes. The Quadra above is notoriously noisy and dated. They stopped making them in the late 80s or early 90s, and the company never looked back. They never looked very far forward, either. The Taj Mahal reverb lets you modulate the reverb decay times, which creates a noisy shimmering effect. It's part of what made Global Communication's Pentamerous Metamorphosis so great.
Here is an example, though they're also heavily using the Yamaha FX500. Maybe I should buy ol' CS one of those.
Just in case one Slowdive track wasn't quite enough for you, here is my favorite.
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