Label Description: VINYL VERSION AVAILABLE HERE: elasticstage.com/timerival/releases/cooked-album

TIME RIVAL VISITATION QUESTIONNAIRE

CONDITION HUMAN (CNDHMN):You live in suburban Illinois. What is the most midwestern thing about you?

TIME RIVAL (TR):I grew up within one mile of the world’s largest corn maze

CNDHMN: Your album is titled ìCooked.î Care to explain? Are you a major foodie?

TR: Not really a foodie, no. I mean…I like food but I usually go for the simple things. Cooked, first and foremost, is some Gen Alpha slang. My son’s a pre-teen and into video games so he uses it in his vocabulary pretty regularly. I try to pepper it in when I talk to him just to be annoying. On top of that, though, it relates to the music because to me, this album has an over saturated, sun-bleached sound to it that connects the tracks together and makes it sound, well…cooked.

CNDHMN: Describe your journey to becoming a musician. Did you grow up in a household of music? Was it artsy? Were you always drawn to it or was it a later development?

TR: My parents aren’t musicians but they did expose me to different types of music. Listening was a big part of my upbringing, and allowing me to have my own musical tastes in my more impressionable years helped. I had a tape collection at 6 years old and a growing CD collection shortly after that. Any money I got as a kid went into buying CD’s.

I played trumpet in 5th grade band but it didn’t really interest me. My journey as a musician really started when I was around 14 years old and a friends’ older brother gave me a burned CD-R with some cracked music software on it. I taught it to myself and it really just grabbed my attention in a way nothing else did at the time. I decided to pursue music in college and played percussion in ensembles and orchestras. The engineering and production side was always more my speed though.

CNDHMN: You run the eclectic label Triplicate Recordings. Where’d the name come from and how does running it inform the music you make as Time Rival?

TR: There’s a little backstory here, in the early 2010’s I was invited to join an electronic music producer collective that we eventually called Mangled Music. There were about 12 of us ranging different styles. As the members started to lose interest and disband, I thought it would be cool to start a label with two of the artists in the group (George ìSuncastleî Ernst & Bryan ìBVSMVî Kraft) as a way to release our own music while sharing the workload. If you look back at the first year of Triplicate, all of the albums from 2018 come from the three of us. We picked Triplicate Records as a name because there were three of us, and it was a mildly amusing play on words.

As Time Rival, I record a seriously unnecessary amount of music and very little of it ends up on Triplicate Records. There are several other amazing artists that keep coming back to us and the release schedule is pretty limited, so I don’t want to take opportunities away from them because I decided to make 16 albums this year. I set aside music throughout the year that I think would be good for Triplicate and I squeeze myself into the schedule when I can.

CNDHMN: There’s a rumor you have a secret rap album as MC SOUTHSIDE MIKE called “MIC IT LIKE ITS HOT.” If false play it like it’s true. If true play it like it’s a terrible secret. So? (BONUS: your top 5 MC’s)

TR: Funny you should mention that, so I grew up listening to rap and very early on in my music production, I would find vocal stems of rap songs on file sharing services (this was pretty tough in the early days of the internet) and put them over weird beats I made. I certainly wouldn’t call it hip-hop, it was a very strange fusion. I lost all of those old recordings so I doubt they will surface any time soon.

Top 5 MC’s
Andre 3000 (Outkast)
Raekwon (Wu-Tang Clan)
Guru (Gang Starr)
Rakim (Eric B & Rakim)
Black Thought (The Roots)

CNDHMN: Time to play “Desert Island Device!” You’re stranded on a desert island and you can bring one piece of electronic gear. Doesn’t have to b e musical even. What is it?

TR: This might be a cop out answer but I’d bring a field recorder. I’m currently using the Zoom H6 and I have a few of the different mics you can swap in, but the X/Y gets the job done. If I was going to take it to a desert island I’d probably upgrade to the newer versions with 32-bit float recording to bring down that noise floor.

CNDHMN: What’s the most ridiculously overpriced piece of high end stereo equipment out there?

TR: There are some vanity home theater setups out there that cost upwards of $5,000,000 and I’m guessing a blind A/B test with a $5,000 system would be too close to call. The technology now is all pretty good, even for budget stuff. If I really wanted to splurge on something I’d build my own open baffle kit. But I would need a bigger room for that.

CNDHMN: Do you have a specific approach to making music? Any thoughts or overarching ideas when you sit down or stand to play?

TR: It starts in my paper planner when I have “new music” written for the day. I do this three times a week. I don’t always come up with something usable but I usually do. If it’s in the schedule, I just sit down and do it. I work in a few different genres so I like to switch it up to keep things interesting. I draw inspiration from field recordings, books, music, movies, etc. Even if I’m not particularly inspired, once I start working the ideas start to flow.

CNDHMN: What were the instruments used on “Cooked?” Do you have a favorite?

TR: Acoustic Instruments:
– Tongue Drums (various sizes)
– Native American Flute
– Ukulele
– Glockenspiel
– Kalimba
– Upright Piano

Electronic & Virtual Instruments
– Zoom H6
– Madrona Labs Aalto
– Madrona Labs Kaivo
– Arturia Microfreak
– Modal Electronics Skulpt Synth SE
– Ellitone Multi-Synth

I don’t really have a favorite, everything has its place

CNDHMN: Any final words before the inevitable heat death of the universe?

TR: Be nice. If everyone did that, the universe would be a much better place. 

all tracks composed and recorded by michael southard
mastered by michael southard.
cover layout and design by chang terhune and michael southard.