I was going through my collection of random royalty-free sample bits and bobs that I’ve accumulated over the years, and came across this one particular random 25-second-or-so snippet of something relentlessly upbeat and “pop”-y, and I decided that I had to see what would happen if I effectively mangled it beyond all recognition.
First, I took the snippet and put it through Hourglass, stretching and glitching it through a couple of different randomizations, making the results the two “main” channels of the track, processed through various effects. To that I added an instance of Cataract performing a random walk through a selection of the original clip, both stretched versions and another sound source I happened to have on my desktop. There’s also an instance of the track processed through Granulizer to create the underlying noise bed, and an instance of Lancinantes to provide the additional central drone that ties it all together. It took a while to balance all of the different tracks, but I think it comes together into a reasonably focused and meditative soundscape (well, meditative for me, at least).