Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

120 followers 200 following 120 posts

🇨🇮🐘
my library 📚: thoughthazard.neocities.org
sometimes: White Owl Records, ‪Bruiser Mag, whatever else i feel like.

Posts Replies Media Videos

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

NYC, excited to announce For the ravers and synth gearheads alike: White Owl Records SIDECHAIN is back Friday 9/19 at @transpecos.bsky.social in Ridgewood. live hardware jams all night. Early bird tix available now.

Flyer artwork as always by yours truly.

ra.co/events/2250951

Sidechain - Live Machine Music Flyer for September 19th at Trans-Pecos in Ridgewood, NY. Buzzi, S4M23, Tabob, TJ McAu, Conor Krane. Live hardware synth techno all night.

September 3, 2025 at 9:00 PM

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

new work-
Spectral Mutation: Various Artists - Permutations 1
Cover Artwork and Layout for Asheville NC-based Record Label
ft: Matthew Cha, SSG, Marteka Fair, AMB-5, Cutsnare, Chris Lock, OHMU, Evaporationist, Anthony Pena, Will Karmis
spectral-mutation.bandcamp.com/album/permut...

August 17, 2025 at 1:14 AM

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

July 29, 2025 at 8:17 AM

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

White Owl Records: Instagram interview with Coast2c (CDMX) - Radical Devotion Design, Layout
EP Out August 1st
available for presave/pre-order now (loading in 4K recommended)
whiteowlrecords.bandcamp.com
whiteowlrecords.xyz

July 29, 2025 at 8:17 AM

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

There are apparently only 2 places in the entire city of Philadelphia that still repair or sell typewriters and one is in my neighborhood because of course it is. Ran in there yesterday and chatted w the owner. She teaches touch typing to kids on the weekends

Typewriter Takeout at WPM Typewriter Shop in Philadelphia

June 29, 2025 at 3:52 PM

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

+4 more local ones in philly. shoutouts digicams from early 2000s. i got a 2000 sony cybershot off ebay but i gotta track down a battery charger to take actual pics from it. maybe ill finally develop these film rolls

June 28, 2025 at 6:15 PM

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

June 28, 2025 at 6:15 PM

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

Hi! Here's some incredibly boring information about New York from my 2004 Kodak Easyshare:

June 28, 2025 at 6:15 PM

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

2/2

ack: Do you feel influenced by that dub style that Basic Channel and Wackies are known for?

Talker: I don’t want to say that my style is a dub style, you know I’m not doing Basic Channel or Mala or Augustus Pablo style stuff. But the notions of using sends and returns, using delays for syncopation, cutting things in and out, deleting space – I totally use all of these techniques. I wish I had a mixer setup – I’d love to do more by hand, but I bought a faderfox so that I can midi-map my sends and use my hands instead of drawing in the automation, since drawing it in doesn’t sound as good. I almost feel like using dub techniques is timeless – it’s the same way with chopping an amen break. I don’t think we’ll ever figure out how many ways you can chop an amen break.

Jack: Are there any other techniques you rely on besides dub techniques?

Talker: I’ve got to give a shout out to Lucas Marchal (@dc11). He’s been such a massive help for me with his modular demo videos. They’re super in-depth and I think they’re really transferable to the DAW too. While I was making the EP I’d message him for routing tips and troubleshooting questions. He’s been super helpful in providing techniques.

J: Can you share one?
T: Sure – Not to get technical, but I have a thing set up on the modular that I might as well hardwire at this point. The voltage multistage has two rows of CV and I’ll feed the modulation row into this basic Doepfer 4 stage sequential switch to make this buchla style subsequencer. I’d set it to three stages, and then maybe I’d have like a 7 step sequence playing, and then I’d feed it into an attenuator, and then into the make noise function for a simple envelope. I’d feed that into anything – usually it would be the filter amount on my main voice. So if the two sequences align it would just bump the filter amount. And at the same time I’d have another envelope triggered every like 13 steps from PAM’s, and I’ll send that into the aux on the metropolis so it’ll change the octave. I can turn up this potentiometer and it’ll just pitch it way out of tune and make it go crazy, and with the filter opening up it just explodes for a quick second and then closes all back down to normal.
J: Woah – and what does that do?
T: It just – it adds that extra layer of unpredictability. I can hook it up to whatever I want and it will play itself in weird ways. If you’re listening to a completely static loop it gets boring, but if it's bumping around and clashing into itself in these ways it's more interesting.
J: The title of the EP, It’s Not The Archer, It’s The Arrow – I thought it was a typo when you sent it to me, because I’m like – wait – it is the archer though.
T: (Laughs) Yeah it was a typo originally. I had it backwards, and then when I went back to it I thought it was funny. And like – you’re a gear head, I’m a gear head – there’s always this notion that just one more piece of gear, just one more synth and you’ll finally be able to write the track.

J: Guilty.
T: Me too. So the title kind of plays on the gear acquisition syndrome that everyone falls into – that I fall into. I’ve always liked the notion of poking fun at yourself. The typo made me laugh, so I decided to keep it.

Talker - It's Not The Archer, It's The Arrow releases July 3, 2025.

June 25, 2025 at 8:37 PM

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

White Owl Records: Instagram interview for Talker (NYC) - It's Not The Archer, It's The Arrow
Editorial Design, Layout
EP Out July 3rd, 2025 available for presave now
(alt text available)
whiteowlrecords.xyz

The Archer and the Arrow: an Interview with Talker

Raised in Savannah, Georgia, Talker is no alien to the hot summer sun, barreling down on us and our matching black cold brews. He gleefully shares his encyclopedic opinions on music niches and mainstreams – only slowed by the occasional drag of his American Spirit. His first release on White Owl Records, It’s Not The Archer, It’s The Arrow, is out soon. Sweat-doused, we catch up to discuss his production techniques, the internet’s effect on DJing, and gearhead syndrome.

Jack: How’d you get into making music?

Talker: Let’s see. It was summertime, I was 14 and I went to my cousin's house. His friends were making really cheesy trance tracks on fruity loops, and I was like, ‘Wait, you can just make music on the computer?’ – that was mind blowing for me. Then a few months later at church my friend Aaron gave me a USB with a cracked Ableton Live 8 and was like, ‘This is what Skrillex uses to make music,’ (laughs) – I was listening to a lot of Skrillex and Deadmau5.

Jack: Me too.

Talker: A few years later I met Ian (@Cades) and he’s had the best music taste ever from an infant. At the time he introduced me to Ben UFO through his Boiler Room 47 set – it’s that early 2010’s post-dubstep and grime instrumentals. And he plays a Three 6 Mafia record and that James Blake remix of A Milli by Lil Wayne. It was just all this different type of music. I probably still listen to the mix like once a month.

Talker: I got to see him back in 2021 with Objekt at Club Night Club. They’d play all these different things and recontextualize them in different ways – and it’s the overlap of these different styles that creates this third thing that only exists in that room. Once you get into this place of playing a lot of different genres you really get these interesting third songs.

Jack: It can be so cool to see people live that you’ve grown up with online.

Talker: Totally – I mean, we didn’t have any clubs to go to back in Savannah. There were just jam bands and karaoke nights. We didn’t have any other context outside of whatever sets we were listening to online. I grew up thinking there were no rules as to what you could mix – no genre specifications. People today can be such genre specialists, but I think it’s interesting for the crowd to be taken through different sonic avenues.

Jack: That’s interesting because your last release on your own label, Grand Prix (@Grand Prix Recordings), feels very different from this one, which is way more techno.

Talker: I’m glad you brought this up. Both EPs are very different, but like I said, I think that’s kind of silly to be a genre specialist because there's so much good music out there. That’s why I enjoyed doing this record so much. I’ve always wanted to make proper techno, and I’ve always been really bad at it. But now I feel like I’m more cued into the sound, the technique, and what my tastes actually are – I know the context better.

Jack: And so what are those contexts that you’re coming from with this EP?

Talker:I ’ve always been fascinated by the Detroit-Berlin connection. Y’know Detroit was like its own little microcosm, the midwest in general was its own microcosm of music. Obviously you’ve got your big names from Detroit, but you’ve also got DVS1 doing things in like Montana – just random places. It’s like, ‘There was a techno scene here in the ‘90s? Oh wait – 5000 people would show up to these parties every weekend?’ Seeing the do-it-yourself drive – knowing how inclusive these communities were, there’s just something very special about that run-and-gun attitude. And then there’s Basic Channel, which is obviously a big influence for me – for everyone I think. It's interesting though how they spent a lot of time in the Bronx with the Wackies studio. They learned how to do dub mixing and recording from Bullwackie. They found a lot of Jamaican artists that were either still in Jamaica or had immigrated to New York. Artists who maybe never really saw their true light at the time and re-press their records 30 or 40 years after they had recorded it. So I’ve always found the whole Wackies stuff through Basic Channel to be really cool too – and I genuinely feel like they really wanted to build that community with what they had to offer, and bring that sound to a place totally across the world.

June 25, 2025 at 8:37 PM

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

recently i've been working here and there to do graphic works for Baltimore's BRUISER Magaznie.
i'd really appreciate it if you checked out their amazing writing and maybe submit a piece or two at www.bruisermag.com

(I'm gonna make a post soon abt taking freelance/commissioned work - stay tuned)

Illustration for Gram Hummel's "I Need To Go Outside Permanently".

Illustration for Ryan Bender-Murphy's "The Genius In Letting It Fall".

Illustration for Caleb Bethea's "Remembering Birth".

May 9, 2025 at 4:55 PM

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

March 29, 2025 at 9:24 PM

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

some photos from wednesday night's party. i took these with a Kodak EasyShare CX7430 from 2004. on one hand i am very glad that the camera i grew up with as a kid still works! on the other hand it makes me feel some type of way about this camera now being "vintage digital photography" lol

March 29, 2025 at 9:24 PM

chaka

@chaka.bsky.social

happy friday team. did this flyer artwork for a release show at Rash Bar in BK soon - techno for the heads, both live syntth sets and DJ sets. and it's free 🕺🏿dont be a stranger now, if you're in new york it's time to put your dancing boots on.