Cray

As Cray I cre­ate aural nov­els. This is not music but mo­ments in time.

Er­ro­neous Hal­lu­ci­na­tions has been recorded with syn­the­siz­ers and short­wave radio, at Am­ne­sia In­ter­na­tional in 2020.
All you hear has been writ­ten by Ross Healy

CRAY is Ross Healy and this is his sec­ond Mod­ulisme Ses­sion, please feel free to also lis­ten to #26 :

https://mod­ulisme.info/ses­sion/26

Ross has been heav­ily in­volved with elec­tronic music since the mid 90’s. Re­leas­ing record­ings for la­bels in Aus­tralia, Ger­many, France, United King­dom, Ire­land and the U.S under many dif­fer­ent names (This Dig­i­tal Ocean, Am­ne­sia,Siko Spunji, Roland Ober­heim, Ryou Oon­ishi, 56k, Oskar T Oram and Cray) cov­er­ing many styles of elec­tronic music, Avant im­prov elec­tron­ics, Ex­per­i­men­tal com­puter music, Noise, In­dus­trial, Techno, Am­bi­ent, IDM and Drum n Bass.
As well as his lust for elec­tronic music mak­ing , Ross has also co-​run Global Warm­ing (night­club), writ­ten for Dig­i­tal mag­a­zine, remixed (demixed) artists work, de­signed web page sounds, had his music used in TV shows and com­mer­cials and has per­formed live around the globe.
Ross is also the found­ing mem­ber of VIC­MOD, co-​owner of VIC­MOD Records and a mem­ber of the VIC­MOD En­sem­ble.

What have you been work­ing on lately, and do you have any up­com­ing re­leases or per­for­mances?

I record every few days, so there is al­ways a cre­ation to lis­ten back to and com­pile at a later date.
No gigs planned.

I know that the first sys­tem you had bought was a Serge, do you still play it?

No, I sold the Serge to pay for the Buchla sys­tem. Truth is that I did buy an­other Serge sys­tem later on but also ended up sell­ing it.

How long did it take for you to be­come ac­cus­tomed to patch­ing your own syn­the­sizer to­gether out of its com­po­nent parts?

A good few years, I have prob­a­bly had 4 euro sys­tems and got bored with them so I sold them and started again. Say­ing that I am happy with the euro sys­tem I have now. Its been the same for the last 4 years.
Its more aimed at cre­at­ing am­bi­ence/ab­stract elec­tron­ics, sam­ple ma­nip­u­la­tion etc I re­ally dont need to add to it.

At home you favor the Buchla, VCS3, which are your favourite ones? Why?

The VCS3 is the clos­est thing to the sound of elec­tric­ity and I love that !
It re­ally is best suited for more ab­stract elec­tron­ics. While I know you can make bass sounds, melodies, etc… I do pre­fer to make ab­stract sounds with it and be­cause of the joy­stick it is in­ter­ac­tive.
The Buchla is just like a trippy space­ship so I love it be­cause it takes me to other places.
But I enjoy all my synths. They all do slightly dif­fer­ent things.

In­stru­ment build­ing may ac­tu­ally be quite com­po­si­tional, defin­ing your sonic palette, each new mod­ule en­rich­ing your vo­cab­u­lary. Would you say that their choice and the way you build your sys­tems can be an in­te­gral part of your com­po­si­tional process? Or is this the other way round and you go after a new mod­ule be­cause you want to be able to sound-​design some of your ideas?

Yes to­tally, I knew 16 years ago what I wanted in my mod­u­lar sys­tem but the mod­ules were not avail­able. You go through trial and error to get the end re­sult. You get im­pressed with new mod­ules and want to test them out until you may find those which suit you best.
I havent re­ally bought any new mod­u­lar gear for a while and am pretty much out of the loop with what is new.

Do you pre­fer single-​maker sys­tems (for ex­am­ple, Buchla, Make Noise, Erica Synths, Roland, etc) or mak­ing your own mod­u­lar syn­the­sizer out of in­di­vid­ual com­po­nents from what­ever man­u­fac­turer that matches your needs.

I do like the fact that my mod­u­lar sys­tem is mine only. I am fairly sure no one else has the same set up and that is the best thing about mod­u­lar.
I was Tony’s (Make Noise) very first cus­tomer, he made a Wog­gle­bug for me prior to be­com­ing Make Noise so I will al­ways look at the Make Noise stuff. I do have a mini 0 Coast sys­tem which I enjoy. The Buchla is also amaz­ing as are all synths in their own right.

Do you tend to use pure mod­u­lar sys­tems, or do you bring in out­side ef­fects and de­vices when play­ing or record­ing?

I use all my syn­the­siz­ers and ex­ter­nal ef­fects like the Poly Beebo and I cre­ate all my own sounds and ef­fects. Same with the Em­press Ef­fects Zoia and Even­tide H9. I love to pro­gram my synths and ef­fects to push them to their lim­its.
I bought a Hy­drasynth last year and cre­ated 200 sounds for it. I am sell­ing a Hy­drasynth sound bank as I got so many re­quests to sell my sounds. I felt funny about it at first but know no one can be Cray so they can be their own artists and will use my sounds for dif­fer­ent ends.

Would you please de­scribe the sys­tem you used to cre­ate Er­ro­neous Hal­lu­ci­na­tions? What is your com­po­si­tional process?

Er­ro­neous Hal­lu­ci­na­tions is just the fact I re­ally enjoy al­ter­nate worlds.
I enjoy trip­ping out, en­ter­ing new re­al­i­ties. So all my al­bums are re­ally al­ter­nate worlds, por­tals away from the bor­ing world we live in of cheap en­ter­tain­ment where so much en­ter­tain­ment does not in­ter­est me at all. The all singing all danc­ing, block­buster world is not for me.
My in­ter­ests are more es­o­teric. I get joy out of look­ing at shad­ows, na­ture, learn­ing about con­scious­ness, A.I. etc…
The rea­son I love syn­the­siz­ers is that they are like LSD trips, you can cre­ate al­ter­nate worlds son­i­cally.

You have de­cided to no longer call what you do music. “ Its a snap­shot of a mo­ment, an­other world, a novel.”, could you please de­velop such aes­thet­ics? Con­cept? Ex­pe­ri­ence?

I am not com­pos­ing songs, verse/cho­rus like and feel I am not cre­at­ing music ei­ther, un­less I am in the mood to do so i.e my Ryou Oon­ishi al­bums that are more music like.
When I lis­ten to my cre­ations they are like al­ter­nate worlds, mul­ti­verses, mem­o­ries in rooms/ spaces or worlds that exist else­where, mo­ments in time. I pre­fer to mix all the mo­ments into a greater jour­ney so a per­son can im­merse them­selves in that world, just like how you read a novel, it tells a story and places you in its world. That is what I want my al­bums to do. I am re­ally look­ing for­ward to the day where I can sit on an vir­tual alien planet and just slowly ex­plore with no de­sire to kill peo­ple, solve puz­zles, get cred­its et all…
Just to sit and enjoy that world.

What do you think that can only be achieved by mod­u­lar syn­the­sis that other forms of elec­tronic music can­not or makes it harder to do?

It al­lows you to cre­ate the tools spe­cific to your needs.
My sys­tems need to be exact to meet my needs. I dont need tra­di­tional drum kit sounds, leads etc. I need total sound ma­nip­u­la­tion and a mod­u­lar sys­tem al­lows that.

Can you tell us about your col­lec­tive label Vic­MOD Records?

I set up Vic­mod Records a few years after of run­ning VIC­MOD (the monthly mod­u­lar synth meet in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia which has been run­ning for about 16 years). I wasnt hear­ing what I wanted to lis­ten too and talk­ing to many of the orig­i­nal Muff Wig­gler Forum mem­bers and VIC­MOD mem­bers I de­cided to get their records out to the world.

Within the past few years have you been feel­ing close to some other con­tem­po­rary Mod­u­lar­ists?

Not re­ally. I am over car­ing about what in­stru­ments a per­son uses. I care about where their com­po­si­tion takes me vi­su­ally and makes me feel emo­tion­ally.

Any ad­vice you could share for those will­ing to start or de­velop their “Mod­ulisme” ?

It takes a while and re­search is a must to find what you want to cre­ate and how to cre­ate it.
Just like in life there will be trial and error. You must never stop until you reach your per­fec­tion.