Cycle Hiccups

Cycle Hiccups was conceived and realised as the solo project of Alexandr Velikoselsky. The author did not made any borders for himself, he — as many others — just wanted to write and perform music singly. And he knew that most probably he will sing — because he loves to do this.

The name “Cycle Hiccups” is a small charade of personal kind as also in some sense it’s an illustration for the music. It’s a cycle that periodically hiccups — in fact the loops are not always come out perfectly closed. It’s also a continious hiccough that makes you laughing.

“I had not wanted to make music on a computer and even more I had not wanted to play live via this device, so I invented something. That is: I bought a loop-station and began to make tunes from short cuts, turning them into loops, singing something over them, adding a second and then a third voice. I understood that this method gives me all that I need: it allows me to write music, to rehearse, to make recordings, and to perform. So, I decided to keep on with it. With time, I added to my set of instruments a MIDI-keyboard and a small processor of effects.

Generally, all my recorded tunes were played in real time — that is why the sound has definite lo-fi feeling. Compositions which I made are mostly songs, although lyrics are so much abstract so that they work only as a musical component. I sing something that in my opinion is suitable to music: words, phrases, portions of sounds and letters, and anything whatever. In musical slang this is called ‘fish’ — a temporary text that has to be replaced later by normal version, but in my case this ‘fish’ remains in a final result.

I like to improvise and I suppose that improvisation is perhaps the freshest and the most interesting mode not only for concerts but also for music writing. And the style is secondary.

Now I’ve got Monome — funny DIY-controller that allows me to make lots of various interesting things. And, while it is completely connected with software, it doesn’t reduce my concert abilities but only increases them.”