Category Archives: Gear

This Is What Paisley Babylon Is About…

Paisley Babylon has been described in many, many ways. Dark ambient/goth/industrial is one of them. “A mix of Golem and Ennio Morricone” is another. I’m pretty sure that’s the German prog band Golem and not the deathmetal one.

One reviewer called Paisley Babylon, “ambient, trippy sample-laden psychedelia. If Funki Porcini is like ‘shrooming, then Paisley Babylon is like spending several hours in a flotation tank after ingesting a couple of hash brownies.”

Yet another said, “Warped, trance-inducing sounds…”

There’s a common thread running through a good deal of the comments about Paisley Babylon music. When not being compared to soundtracks by John Carpenter or even Goblin (a bit of a stretch, that one) there’s quite a lot of references to altered mental states, hallucinations, dreams and nightmares, highs of various kinds.

Paisley Babylon has always been about altered mental states. There are two or three really influential ones. A great deal of the first Paisley Babylon CD was written during sleep deprivation, and bouts of insomnia. Strange that those two would work together on the first record–you’d think that it would be one or the other somehow. If memory serves, it started out as intentional sleep deprivation and wound up turning into insomnia. Yikes.

But those strange mental places you go into when you haven’t slept properly, those odd thoughts and warped perceptions of things are what this music is all about.

To paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, I would never condone using alcohol or other substances combined with extreme lack of sleep and a near obsessive/compulsive need to keep recording, playing back, and embarking on the mental flights/fugues/waking dream states this music tends to bring on…but it’s always worked for me.

I guess I am my own audience for this material. Anything that causes your perceptions to become strange, twisted, unfathomable or otherwise altered is a friend to me. Paisley Babylon could be called mushroom music, but I’d hate to be associated with psychedelics alone–ANY altered state of mind from fever dreams to near-death experiences IS Paisley Babylon, to me. The music you hear–or wish you COULD hear. What you might experience on the operating table or after a long night of tequila slammers and talk of Carlos Castaneda.

What Paisley Babylon is…is that feeling you get falling asleep at a film festival during one movie, waking up in the middle of another one, and that wonderful disorientation you have before becoming fully awake. Where you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t, what was just part of the half-dream you just had and what’s in the film itself–or even understanding which film was which.

Jet lag, drunken headphone magic, the 420 thrill of discovering new sounds in recordings you’ve heard for years, the previously mentioned sleep deprivation, the effects of fever and cough medicine, nodding and waking during all-night movie marathons, the feeling you get waking up during a sleep walking jag, highway hypnosis…all of these states and more inspire, help create and motivate Paisley Babylon music.

A really excellent example is the Paisley Babylon track titled, Ever Hear Me Screaming? This is posted in its entirety at Bandcamp and can be heard for free–all nine minutes and 59 seconds of it.

I use a variety of gear to get to these sounds, including analog synths like the Juno 106, Juno 1, Theremin, Yamaha CS-1X, MicroKorg, tape loops, turntables, found sounds, invented sounds, feedback loops and much more. In the past I’ve also taken samples of pop music, manipulated them into harsh, unrecognizable noise and played them as percussion sounds. I’ve even taken audio from old home video recordings to abuse, mangle, and turn into subliminal messages.

If you are a fellow sleep-deprived, altered state, chemically altered traveler, you’ve got a simpatico mind in Paisley Babylon.

–Joe Wallace

Theremin Vs. Turntable Part 2

This is not a Paisley Babylon performance video as such, it’s more of a test of the stripped-down, lean and mean street performance setup for some shows I’ll be doing this year in and around Chicago. The setup includes a Moog Theremin, portable battery operated turntable with some vinyl DJ battle breaks, a MicroKorg, and a couple of echo boxes.

Paisley Babylon is available to do shows with this setup–get in touch by e-mail: jwallace (at) turntabling (dot) Net. Have gear, will travel.



The beats in this video are from DJ battle break beat vinyl LPs, but all other non-percussion sounds are generated by Paisley Babylon. I also have a collection of dub rhythms, reggae-inspired beats, and other sounds I sometimes use for the live performances. While I do enjoy creating and manipulating my own percussion, I love the idea of using the turntable as a live performance instrument and the DJ battle break LPS are perfect in this regard.

–Joe Wallace

Theremin Vs. Turntable: Paisley Babylon Equipment Test

Just as with my former fellow bandmates in Crevice, when it’s time to do Paisley Babylon stuff in the rehearsal space, it’s an EQUIPMENT TEST rather than a rehearsal. Well, perhaps that’s not ENTIRELY true–Paisley Babylon does have an improvisational aspect to it but it’s not ALL off-the-cuff…plenty of structure hiding in there.

Here’s one shot recently with the new theremin. Paisley Babylon’s gear list for this video includes a portable, battery operated turntable with a vinyl LP of DJ battle breaks supplying the drum track, all other noises produced by theremin and MicroKorg.

Hit 65 Retro Album Cover

Hit 65 retro album cover

This most excellently retro album cover from 1965 comes courtesy of the delightful LP Cover Lover, which is a favorite of mine. One of the awesome things about this particular look is the “future now” vibe. I’m a sucker for those squeaky-clean whites and the rounded corners that let you know this girl just might have arrived from a space ship or time machine a few minutes ago.

We have the space race to thank for a lot of that futurist design and fashion, methinks…and I’m soooo glad it happened. Where would be we today if not for Sputnik, JFK’s moon landing ambitions, and UFO hysteria?

DJ Paisley Babylon Spins Zombie Disco 2 July 24 @Lucky Number Grill Chicago

Zombie Disco 2

It’s true–Zombie Disco 2 is a DJ Paisley Babylon night of evil disco treats. While it’s true that HorrorSociety.com has me listed as DJ Joe Wallace instead of the more wildly exciting name I DJ under these days, it’s still a DJ Paisley Babylon gig, make no mistake.

It’s true that I do gigs more or less by word of mouth–I prefer to be more selective about my gigs–I do pimp myself out from time to time for cash. As it happens, right after Zombie Disco 2, I have some availability, so if you’re looking for something different than what the club kids are spinning, do drop a line. You can download a 40-minute long sample of the sonic madness I conjure up to see what all the fuss is about. Not much disco on this one, I’m afraid, but I do have a large library of the stuff. I also have a massive amount of retro 60s/70s lounge, 80s electronica & new wave, trippy shagadelic music (look out, Austin Powers!) and a huge catalog of dub.

Back to Zombie Disco 2–it’s July 24 2010 at the Lucky Number Grill. Get advance tix or pay a tenner at the door. See you there!