My longer term Beijing band that I played drums in. We started shortly after I moved to Beijing and had been going strong for about three years at the point of making this album. We recorded it with Yang Haisong, the frontman of a somewhat legendary Beijing band called PK14. He owned a studio outside the city centre underneath a carpark. We had a great time, though it took six months to release it on account of a slow mixing process, band members getting physical therapy and other members returning to their homecountries for two or three weeks at a time. I left after we played the album release show (which was on my Birthday!) to make more time for electronics and rest.

Vocals – Mao Dayu // Guitar – Michael Fuksman // Bass – Jason Groot // Drums – Kieran Pringle // Mixing & recording – Yang Haisong // Mastering – Brad Seippel // Artwork by my wife Zhang Qiongshi.

First EP by my other Beijng band I am in. I play guitar in this one, and the guitarist from 狗牙 plays drums. Silly, genre-bending math rock. This band is all about having fun. We recorded it in a practice studio located in what used to be the air-raid shelter under a block of flats in Beijing. Me and the bassist combined our sound cards to get enough inputs to record more than one member of the band. We still didn't have enough mic inputs for the drums so we ended up using contact mics for the kick and snare. The snare sounded terrible and it took the application of more than 20 effects like declipping and companding to make it sound like an actual snare drum. In the end it turned out much better than we thought it would. 200 copies of this record were made and every one came with a pack of crayons to color in the front cover with.

Guitars – David Wilson & Kieran Pringle // Bass – Brad Seippel // Drums – Michael Fuksman // Mixing – Kieran Pringle & Brad Seippel // Mastering – Michael Winkler // Artwork by my wife Zhang Qiongshi.

Never physically released, but I had planned to until the project fell away to make time for synth building and two bands. I definitely to resurrect it at some point. The release is a collection of all my live sets from the year 2013, of which there were only 4 and 3 of those were at the same venue. Every set was improvised with my guitar and Max/MSP, though general structure was laid out and all the coding was done before hand. No pre-recorded loops or samples at all. The main reason for discontinuing the project was it taking me nearly a month to prepare for shows because I build everything from the ground up every time. When I eventually revive this, I plan to code a bunch of reusable building blocks first to make the preparation process much quicker and painless. Also comes with some "artwork" I made around the same time.

Programming, guitar, mixing, mastering & artwork – Kieran Pringle

We recorded this in my flat shortly after our bassist joined so that we could book more shows. Although five of the songs made it to the album, they were all quite different at the time we made this recording. The drums are actually programmed, we didn't have any way to record me on a kit.

Vocals – Mao Dayu // Guitar – Michael Fuksman // Bass – Jason Groot // Drums, mixing & artwork – Kieran Pringle

Before moving on to the Knowledge stuff, I was toying around with free-improv like stuff and Max/MSP though nothing particulalry fruitful ever came about. I only recorded these two tracks in my bedroom. Around this time I also tried to start a free-improvisation club in the style of "Blood Club", which was the night the Worshipping at the Altar tracks were recorded. The idea was that people would be able to freely get up on stage and make a racket together. It flopped pretty miserably for a multitude of reasons, so maybe I have some sort of spiteful resentment of free-improvisation now or something. It was a lot of fun to play like this though. This will probably also be the only thing under my own name, it feels really narcissistic to me somehow.

Guitar, recording – Kieran Pringle

This was the earlier incarnation of 狗牙. We ended up changing our name and adding our bassist later. At this time we were also tuned slightly higher. We were in C or C#, where as after this point we made the drop down to B. For me, it's interesting to hear how these two songs which we went on to use sounded so different earlier on. It's also probably for the best the drums were programmed on this one also. I could barely play them at the time this was made. I claimed I could play drums just to join a band and I think the guitarist put up with me because he had nobody else to jam with.

Vocals – Mao Dayu // Guitar – Michael Fuksman // Drum programming & mixing – Kieran Pringle // Artwork by my wife Zhang Qiongshi

This was a very short lived punk band. It was short lived because we all had very different ideas about what we actually wanted to be doing and I ended up leaving the band cause it was too exhausting for me to have two at the time. You can see from the artwork that I basically wanted to continue on with what I had been doing in Young Hopefuls, but maybe a bit edgier. I think that comes through a little. I left it to continue on with 被打死了, who would go on to become 狗牙. I can't remember any of the guys' names though which is kind of embarassing. We all eventually fell out of touch. First three songs have vocals, last three don't. Drums are programmed

Bass, drum programming, recording, mixing – Kieran Pringle

After spending my first year in China, I went back home to Edinburgh for a spell and jammed with my friend Jonny. We were both really, really into garage rock at the time. We both listend to Coachwhips, Audacity and Oblivions on repeat for months and this was the outcome. We had a lot of fun making this album in his bedroom with a 4-track Tascam I got off eBay. We never got to take the fun to a stage though, as I ended up moving to Beijing shortly after we finished this.

Guitar – Young Buck // Vocals & Bass – Hopeful Pringle // Alesis SR-16 – Drums // Recording – Kieran Pringle // Mixing & Mastering – Some Canadian guy whose name I have forgot.

The ideas behind this project would go on to be the basis for Knowledge. I was, and still am, very interested in the idea of live electronic music and what it means to preform it. The idea that electronic music is about simply pressing play seems silly to me and I'm very interested in doing the exact opposite and having no pre-prepared material. Worshipping at the Altar was intended to be exactly what Knowledge went on to be - live electronic music recorded and released as live sets. Unfortunately my laptop was stolen from my flat the week after this show so I only every played this one time.

Programming, recording, electronics – Kieran Pringle

This was the second incarnation of Aewy, though in this one it came about from a happy accident with piano sounds and delay. I had been listening to Steve Reich and other minimalist composers and really liked the dynamicless, stacatto piano playing some of them utilized. In the end it sounded a little muzak. It actually reminds me of what plays when you go into building mode in The Sims.

Programming, composition – Kieran Pringle

I used to love the idea of concept albums, and I've always had a nerdy thing for time travel even though I don't believe it is possible. It's something about the possibilities it opens it for crazy sci-fi story lines. Before I had seen Primer – the best time travel movie ever – I was really into the John Titor "mystery". I just liked the story, but particularly I liked the contradictions in the narrative. I tried to create a soundscapy album that described the apocolypse as it happened in his timeline.

Programming, recording, electronics – Kieran Pringle

The Opposite of Music — What is the Opposite of Music? (2008)

This was around the time I discovered the joys of noise/power-electronics and the like. I got really addicted to that abrasive, intense sound and I loved the idea of just taking what is normally good form for music and throwing it out. The entire album was made in adobe audition and I think only two samples were used. Everything else was made purely from going into the spectral analysis mode and either carving out holes in white noise or paining it into specific frequency bands. After that, liberal amounts of reverb and amplifiying everything till it clipped to the extreme. It was a lot of fun to make, probably not very fun to listen to.

Editing, slicing, mashing & mingling – Kieran Pringle

This was my first attempt at both solo music and also electronic music. I nearly lost this at the time that my laptop got stolen but it was saved by me uploading it on the web and managing to download it again. Listening to it makes me strangely nostalgic. For some reason in my head I had written it off as really really primitive and simplistic but listening back to it there is more going on that I give myself credit for. It's also interesting to me to hear some of the rhythmic ideas that I still employ in my music to this day

Programming, composition – Kieran Pringle

This is the earliest survivng recording of me doing anything. My first band from highschool actually did a recording, but its been long lost. I may have accidentally binned it. I probably also couldn't upload it here because I'm pretty sure it was only a recording of a Red Hot Chilli Peppers cover. This band was much better anyway. This was our first ever gig. We played in the basement venue at the Canon's Gait in Edinburgh. We lent support for a Sweedish band called Suis La Lune, who were really great live. Someone in the audience recorded us and then approached us at a later date to give us the recording he made, which we were all greatful for. At the time, I was really in to Circle Takes The Square and the idea of concept albums and stuff. We ended up writing a single song in three acts that were each made up of about 3 to 4 movements. I don't know how we pulled it off. I kind of envy my more ambitious, younger self. I would have been 16 or 17 at the time, and had the same delusions of grandeur that all teenagers do.

Guitar – Kieran Pringle & Scott Dixon // Bass – Colin // Drums – Laurie