(the unofficial site)
DOWNLOADS
I met Sonic ( Mike Meengs ) in 1996, during the time
he was playing with 3 other very talented artists in Sonic Erotica.
Brian Stevenson, the
frontman and vocalist (now with Soul27) , gave me some tunes on a cassette
that he and Mike had done together sort of outside the band. I later
learned it was more or less Brian's poetry set to music. They are still
some of my favorite tunes (Courtship
was on there), and they got me addicted to Mike's way with sounds. Shortly
after, Mike gave me a CD ... LVX NOVA ... aftrer one listen I had a
(bad) feeling that Sonic Erotica wouldn't last much longer. It made
me realize how little Mike needed other players.
Anyway ...
After not seeing or talking to Mike for a year or so, I found him here
(online), and he was producing his own compositions as TurtleBend. While
there are other talented artists strewn throughout his work, it's very
much his work, and I think once you've
been TurtleBent ... there's no turning
back.
Below you will find Sonic's own explaination and some tunes you
can download ...
Enjoy!!
WHAT IS TURTLE BEND?
(From 1999)
Six months ago or so, I had an opportunity to check out a new music
program called "ACID" (by Sonic Foundry) The program allows
the user to synchronize multiple audio loops, and will match the keys
of the loops.At that point in time, I didn't have a computer yet, and
had spent many years developing the art of sample and loop based music
composition.In a nutshell, this program does (automatically) what had
taken me years to learn....shit!
I left my friends house shaking my head...what was next? It seemed to me that the most logical thing for me to do was to create my next crop of songs by programing EVERY SINGLE NOTE THAT YOU HEAR....no loops...no sampled phrases from c.d.s.. all of the synths programed the old way...with c.v. and triggers and guitar tuners and lot's of knob twists! If I used a drum loop, I chopped it up to the individual drum hits , and reprogrammed the beat from scratch! Without a computer to aid me!(it took hours...now Recycle! does it for me in a split second) They still haven't written a program that can replace my old school knowledge of programming synths and beats....it kind of reminded me of the old days of thinking of a beat, and then programming it into a drum machine.
Four months later , I put the songs together on a c.d.( at Incognito Studio in St. Petersburg...thanx Mike Krotz), and started thinking of a name for the project. While I was at my day job, an incredible name came to me..."Sonic Erotica"!...Unfortunetly, that was also the name of my last band and, of course, I couldn't use that again...hmmm...Then it came to me...
"TURTLE BEND"!!!!
...but where did I see that name before?Turtle Bend...not the kind of name you would think of every day(yet).Was it where I grew up? Went fishing? Went to boy scout camp?The world may never know....
That's the Turtle Bend story(sort of)......until next time.....
Sonic(1999)
Sonic (Mike Meengs) was born in Michigan and moved to Florida in 1992.He
has always been fascinated with keyboards,synthesizers,drum machines
and any type of sound making/processing toy.He's an avid Ensoniq user,starting
with the Mirage and ESQ-1,then an EPS,then an EPS 16+,and finally his
ASR-10. Sonic uses a Pentium 4 2.6ghz running any combination of racket-making
software. Hardware synths include Sonic's Korg Mono/Poly and Polysix
analogs,an EML Synkey 2001,an EMU Morpheus,a Novation BassStation,and
a 1973 Minikorg.And OF COURSE...his trusty ASR-10 with 16 meg of RAM
and SCSI.
D'YEA
Drawing on wide range or infuences (too many to list), these guys have
managed to combine a Classice Rock feel with the cutting edge sounds
of the hear and now.
(left to right) Jerry Outlaw, Gene Heinous (Jason Dudney), D'Yea
(Billy Wells), Sean Wainwright, Sonic (Mike Meengs) and Hunter Oswald
.
Their music is a dense aural stew, the product of musicians
who burned the recipe book and stirred together ingredients for no other
reason than it might taste good. And damn if it didn't turn out to have
commercial potential anyway. The band's self-released debut CD, Bassstar
Mission, blends deep-groove funk, crunchy rock riffs and power chords,
primal hooks, swaggering raps, the sonic collage of electronica and
a penchant for prog-rock transitions. If it all sounds a bit much, well
somehow it isn't. In the process, D'Yea easily dodges comparisons to
Kid Rock's straight-out-da-trailer hick-hop and the faceless brigade
of rap-metalists.
Eric Snider (Weekly Planet)
(Read
the rest here.)
Songs from SoundClick.com
| Hit That! | MP3 | play hi-fi | play lo-fi |
| Bumpin' track featuring the killer turntable chops of my good friend Abacus, and the 'top a his head' vocals of lunatic Billy "D'YEA" Wells. Thanks to both of you for making this track complete. | |||
| You Know What I Know (TB Sinful Rock Mix) | MP3 | play hi-fi | play lo-fi |
| My Fevertech remix competition submission. 120bpm | |||
| WILLY | MP3 | play hi-fi | play lo-fi |
| 130 bpm feel-goody thang. Special thanks to Bill Ehrsam for providing the raw beats for me to chop. Lots of vintage analogs on this one...ENJOY! | |||
| Right On Time | MP3 | play hi-fi | play lo-fi |
| A collaboration between me and my good friend Billy Wells. He wrote the lyrics, sang leads, and played guitar. I did the rest of the music and produced/engineered. You like it? Let us know...maybe we'll do more! | |||
| Contimune Album:Lvx Nova ©1997 | MP3 | play hi-fi | play lo-fi |
| Created entirely on an Ensoniq ASR-10 in 1997. Remastered in Sonar. | |||
| Absol 4.4.04 | MP3 | play hi-fi | play lo-fi |
| A lush chill-out track. | |||
| JUMP | MP3 | play hi-fi | play lo-fi |
| Slammin' 132 bpm funk track. | |||
| Real Clean | MP3 | play hi-fi | play lo-fi |
| Left Hanging | MP3 | play hi-fi | play lo-fi |
| 94bpm funk track. Special thanks to bass wiz Chandler for his swingin' low end. | |||
Songs from IUMA.com
| Song |
Download | Stream |
| On The Wall | mp3 - 2.48MB | mp3 / Real |
| Timmy | mp3 - 4.16MB | mp3 / Real |
| Soniphobia | mp3 - 3.79MB | mp3 / Real |
| I Want To Touch You | mp3 - 2.99MB | mp3 / Real |
| Three Or Five | mp3 - 2.99MB | mp3 / Real |
| Right Now! | mp3 - 3.82MB | mp3 / Real |
| Can't Catch A Thought | mp3 - 5.54MB | mp3 / Real |
| Unusual Affairs | mp3 - 3.58MB | mp3 / Real |
| The Lack Of Choice | mp3 - 2.99MB | mp3 / Real |
| Windy | mp3 - 4.57MB | mp3 / Real |
more to come....
