Ever since I had my first live performance as Harmonic Illusion back in April of 2022, I have been looking for other performance opportunities ever since, especially in the form of URL festivals. I have had no luck until now. The folks at 2CD, probably one of my favorite underground URL festivals in this modern age, have graciously given me the chance to open their fifth installment of this festival. Thank you!

Going into this, I immediately knew that I wanted to upgrade the setup from my first performance, as I have now obtained better gear, and I now have larger ideas that would not be possible with my original setup. Perhaps the biggest upgrade in this is from cueing samples in a free app on my iPad, to using a Roland SP-404 mkII for this purpose, (a monster of a sampling unit that allows me so much more control and creativity). Additionally, since a lot of my style comes from playing keyboard over these samples, I wanted to retain this factor, but change it up slightly. In my previous performance, I used a Nord Stage 3, which has and always been my favorite keyboard of all time, but this time around I wanted to try to use something that would be just as powerful for these purposes, but be so much more compact (partially if I ever get the opportunity to take this setup out on the road). For this, I decided to use a Roland JD-08 synth module connected to an M-Audio Keystation 49 mk3 with a Kenton MIDI USB Host. I’m still using the same mixer, the Yamaha MG10, and I upgraded my pedalboard slightly. Switching to a slightly bigger board, the Pedaltrain Nano Max, I’m using an EarthQuaker Devices Arpanoid, EarthQuaker Devices Organizer, Montreal Assembly Count to Five, Malekko Charlie Foxtrot, Catalinbread Csidman, Chase Bliss Mood mkII, Boss RE-2 Space Echo, Boss TE-2 Tera Echo, and an EarthQuaker Devices Rainbow Machine. In this specific performance, I only used a handful of these pedals, though the more I experiment with this setup, the more everything else will come into play. All of the gear mentioned so far is being put on a new two-tier desk that I found on Amazon, which in and of itself also has a small riser on the surface that I specifically built to fit some of these devices. Aside from these, I brought some new additions to the setup, notably being my Fender Squier Classic Vibe 60’s Fretless Jazz Bass (being run through a DigiTech Whammy 5 pedal), a Landscape HC-TT (manually controlled cassette player), and a Tascam Portastudio 414 4-Track, to blend between the digital soundscapes of my music with the analog goodness of tape.

Part of this newly found interest in using cassettes as an instrument came from my discovery and fascination with the artists County Conservation District and Robert Stillman. I have had a wonderful time diving into their discographies, and their live sets have been very inspirational to me. Whether these influences are apparent in this performance or not, this would certainly not exist without them. If by chance either of them are reading this, thank you for all that you create. I would also like to thank Christopher and Clementine at WarbleLoopLab on Etsy and for supplying me with some of the tape loops that I used in this performance, and John Hardig at Treasuretronics in Cincinnati, as well as the artist salt.bmu, for being so helpful in this process of starting to work with tape in this capacity.

As I’ve finally gotten the audio aspect under control, another huge element of this set and virtual sets in general is the visual aspect. As I’m busy enough making the music, I knew I wanted someone else to take over the visuals, and who better yet than an old friend of mine, Liam Sapochnick. For as long as I can remember he’s been interested in video art, and has only been getting better as time goes on. He’s able to capture the psychedelic element that I’ve been trying to express in my music, and here he does so wonderfully. Thank you so much, again, for making my dreams a reality, and I’m sure we’ll be working together so much more in the years to come. Liam would also like to thank someone, who has helped significantly in the production of this set: "Dylans Guides, thank you for being my Premiere Pro Guru and guiding me through the troubled waters of Premiere Pro. It has been a journey of climbing mountains I never thought I would see the peak of, but all because of your spiritual wisdom, now I stand proudly at the top."

While I consider Liam more of an “abstract video editor”, neither him or I are really enough of a “practical video editor” to actually blend his visuals and my performance video together in a suitable manner. In a panic, I turned to the only person who I knew would have some sort of answer, Trenchwraith (who I’ve recently started considering to be my artistic right-hand man, always somehow being involved with these projects), and alas, he had the skills to make work what I thought might have been otherwise impossible. His involvement is the only reason why this final result has turned out so well, and I am just so appreciative that he’s a major part of the Harmonic Illusion project behind the scenes.

Premiered live on 2CD on 10/7/2023