"For about ten years I have prioritized the augmentation of synth loops in production. One of the tropes of electronic music for which I first felt an insatiable appetite was the use of pads, those breezy, glacial synth hits that imply deeper meanings and sky-like openness. By grabbing and parenthesizing a pad, one can change everything about it, like taking a photograph of brilliant color against the monotony of a scene. The frame of the picture provides intimacy for diving into the brilliance, for zooming in and altering the color while the context becomes anew. It is essentially like diving into a different realm. Musically, augmentation is achieved through experimenting with time and pitch, or effects like stretch, reverb, and delay. One of my methods for augmenting pad loops is to run signal through digital reverb on an interface or a DJ mixer/controller (I use Traktor products to make music in addition to hardware), then route the output through analog delay on one or two guitar pedals. One can hear me adjusting the frequency rate of the digital reverb on the mixer throughout this piece, which the mono pedal picks up but with about a 10 second delay. It's the pin drop-like sound and occasional wrapped laser sound.

Repurposing my own patterns and pads is another part of my method, something I call “ecodrone”. The idea of repurposing your own material is ecological in a sense, hence “eco” – and it does have a unique palette sonically. The pad being repurposed and augmented in this piece is from a song I arranged in Fruity Loops in 2004. It's some propriety FLS instrument like bell pad or choir pad. I enjoy the process of retracing old productions and giving them a new context; there's so much one can do with just one sound.

What the augmentation of this particular pad brings out most is a breathing effect, and the combined theme of stretching out, unfolding, and breathing links nicely to both the name and context of the piece. When one is disparaged by a lack of solidarity, one must breathe concentratedly through it and conjure their own validation. Asking for solidarity from others is a virtuous thing to do, but it can cause further disparagement. Such rejection can feel muddy, layered, and demobilizing, like drone. The toxic fragility of humanity breeds strange campaigns that deny recognition of a traumatic experience, despite it being vitally needed. In such sorry cases, one must remove their experience from that denial, reclaim and preserve it. By bringing the experience into a removed context, one can retrace the truth and repurpose their right to solidarity. Calmness and slow breathing then come naturally, as does the self-affirmation that everything that happened was real, that you're right about everything you've seen and experienced.

So, my method for augmenting sound is the same as the practice of self-care during an indefinite period of healing: go back and retrace, capture and repurpose, zoom in and slow down."

- Evelyn Marie Malinowski (Experimental Housewife)