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artemis

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"Laws of Gravity"

San Francisco-based songwriter, vocalist, and electronica artist Artemis gained widespread notoriety with her 2001 debut album, Undone. Her follow-up effort is Gravity (Magnatune, 2004), which further refines her approach to producing lush, intricate trip-hop and electro-pop. For Gravity, Artemis collaborated with longtime bandmates Keith Crusher and David Earl, among others. “We use sampled sounds and live instrumentation,” she says of their production process.

Artemis

Artemis began composing songs for Gravity in 2002. “Everything starts from software synths and loops,” she says. “But I don't have one formula. In the summer of 2003, I rented a flat in northern Scotland to focus on the album. I brought my PowerBook G4, a Novation Remote 25 keyboard controller, an SE Electronics Z5600 [condenser mic], and a hard drive.” While in Scotland, Artemis exchanged ideas with musicians Kolin Fraser of Scotland and Michael Jordan of Germany.

In 2004, production moved into Earl's home in Oakland, California. Earl's project studio has a dual-processor Mac G4/867 MHz machine running Apple Computer's Logic Pro 6, a MOTU 828 mkII audio interface, a Mackie Universal Control control surface, a Roland SH-101 synth, and an M-Audio Keystation Pro 88 keyboard controller. “I use virtual instruments such as Native Instruments Komplete 2, Propellerhead Reason, GMedia M-Tron, and Apple EXS24,” Earl adds. “I use Spectrasonics Liquid Grooves a lot, Logic's native plug-ins, and Waves' Gold Native Bundle.”

For Gravity, Earl needed to bring certain sessions from 2001 into the present. “In 2001, I started converting songs to stems, or submixes,” Earl says. “Now I can open [those] sessions.” In addition, Artemis says, “We all migrated from OS 9 to OS X during this [production]. In the transition, we lost some plug-ins. Some songs turned out differently — and much better, I think. But it took a leap of faith.” Earl adds, “Sometimes I had to manually reassign plug-in settings and instruments.”

Good file management was critically important. “File transfers aren't a problem,” Earl says. “We all work in Logic. I have files on my hard drive of the original sessions, the stem mixes, and the final mixes. All our songs have version numbers that are created every time there's a major change.”


Gravity


The music on Gravity is heavily reliant on sound design. “In ‘Prayer,’ we have rattlesnakes, wolves, wind chimes, campfires, and more,” Earl says. “For ‘Sync or Swim,’ we recorded an old Parker Brothers Merlin [computer] game from 1978,” Earl says. “I used strip silence in Logic to create regions for the bloops and bleeps. I imported them into the EXS24 and used them for a melody. ‘Beautiful Life’ has clocks, crickets, birds, machine shops, and other sounds. The intro to ‘Inception’ [includes] the conning tower of an aircraft carrier, some ham radio noise, and jets. There are atomic bombs, M16s, marching [soldiers], sirens, grenades, and other devices.”

The group recorded cello, guitar, kora, and vocal tracks at Pyramind, a school for music and media production where Earl teaches Logic courses. “Controlled environments are still needed when recording some instruments,” Earl says. They felt that the Z5600 mic was especially well suited for Artemis's voice. “My voice has a bump in it around 500 Hz,” Artemis says. “It's tricky finding a mic that adds presence without losing that warmth.”

Earl and Crusher mixed the album in Logic at Pyramind. “I brought in my CPU, my 828, and my Mackie control surface,” he says. “The room is tuned really well. Also, Pyramind has a Genelec 5.1 system, and using a subwoofer makes all the difference in the world.” - Electronic Musician/Matt Gallagher


"Stage Right"

May 1, 2006 12:00 PM

Bands that employ all or mostly all electronic instruments have unique requirements when it comes to the monitor mix. Without acoustic instruments or even a guitar amp onstage, the band is completely dependent on a monitor mix to hear itself. In situations where the monitor mix is poor or there are no stage monitors at all, the entire performance is in jeopardy.

“Conventional bands with acoustic drums and guitar amps don't need much more than vocals in the floor wedges to play a great show,” says Cliff Tune, drummer and bassist for the critically acclaimed electronic trio, Artemis. “But for us, it's the opposite. The vocals are the loudest thing on the stage.” Vocalist Artemis Robison and Daniel Berkman (keyboards, guitar, kora and Roland Handsonic) complete the band.

“If we don't have complete control of our monitors, we're sunk in a hurry because there are no onstage amplifiers or acoustic drums in our setup,” adds Keith Crusher, the band's manager and recording engineer. “We need to have a perfect monitor mix every night to put on a great show.”
ENTER THE SOUNDWEB

For its 2005 UK tour, Artemis needed to change its system for guaranteeing a clean monitor mix every night. “Keith and I put together an in-ear monitor system for the band based around a Yamaha 03D digital mixing console,” Tune says. “We loved the sound quality, but it was a lot to set up each night — cables, splitters, snakes, all the gear — and breaking everything down took forever.”

“We had to have a more compact and efficient system for the tour because there were major restrictions on the gear we could carry,” Crusher says. “It all needed to fit in the belly of the plane as part of our personal luggage allotments, from Cliff's [Roland] V-Drums to Daniel's instruments, the monitor rack, our lighting rig, cables, merchandise and a change of clothes.”

To meet luggage restrictions and monitoring needs, Tune designed a system based around two BSS Audio Soundweb 9088 distributed audio processors and a Lexicon MX200 multi-effects unit. “The Soundwebs and the MX200 effectively replaced the Yamaha mixing console,” Tune says. “Each of the 9088 processors feature eight inputs and outputs and were networked together to create a 16-by-16 matrix. The Soundweb Designer software is used to control the signal flow within the processors. From the software, I can see and control all of the mixing and processing components inside the 9088s, including mixer and router matrices, compressors, limiters, parametric and graphic EQs, crossovers, filters, delays, signal generators and meters. I built pages containing only the controls for a specific task, with links on the side of the page for quickly jumping between the pages. For example, to tweak Artemis' in-ear mix, I click on the link labeled ‘Artemis Monitors,’ and that screen pops up with an audio mixer just for her mix.”

The monitor rack also includes a Shure PSM600 transmitter for Artemis' wireless in-ear receiver, a Rane HC 6 multichannel headphone console for Berkman and Tune, and A/C power distribution for the rack and the stage gear. A rear-mounted panel was installed and features connectors for the stage inputs, outputs for the in-ear monitors, a passive split output for the house sound system and a FireWire and USB data hub. A MOTU 828mkII is employed as the audio interface for a Mac PowerBook G4 (from which a few backing tracks play during the show); that too lives in the rack. “The entire eight-space rack with all the gear and the cable weighs just under 70 pounds, the maximum allowable weight for most airlines,” Tune says.
IN THE MONITOR MIX

The monitor rack sits onstage next to Tune's V-Drums. At the start of a soundcheck, he connects a PC laptop to the 9088 processors using a single 9-pin serial cable and launches the Soundweb Designer software. All of the input levels are set from the input meters page, and then the in-ear mixes are adjusted for each song. The system worked so well that after only a few shows, most of the levels for each band member's individual monitor mix were correct before the monitor check began. “We always gain our rigs to unity, and since you can save every setting in the Soundweb software, after about four shows we hardly needed to do a monitor check anymore,” Tune says.

The band soon discovered other significant benefits to the Soundweb system. “When you're 7,000 miles away from a club you've never seen, all you can do is trust that the club's response to your tech rider [the band's technical-requirement document] is accurate,” Crusher says. “What we found is that the signal snakes and front-of-house [FOH] gear at many places left much to be desired. For example, it doesn't do much good to bring a 16-channel XLR splitter snake when the venue only has eight XLR connections on its stage box.”

To safeguard against such situations, Tune programmed the Soundweb system to output a discrete stereo mix of the entire band that could be sent directly to the FOH mixer. He even employed the 9088 processor's built-in parametric and graphic EQ in the signal path of the stereo output. That allowed Crusher or Tune to easily EQ the mix to compensate for poorly tuned house P.A. systems. “Instead of the 16-channel split,” Tune explains, “only one pair of cables would connect to the stage box, and a long serial cable would be run to FOH to allow laptop mixing from the FOH position.”

“That became our standard method of operation,” Crusher adds. “Once we checked the monitors with the laptop onstage, we would move it to FOH to mix the room. We only actually used the house mixing systems in a couple of venues. All the other shows were done strictly from the laptop controlling the Soundwebs.”

“Having the Soundweb rig on tour with us really made playing live much easier,” Robison says. “There was much less set up required for shows because everything was dialed in ahead of time.”
- Remix Magazine / Eric Hawkins


"A Feast for the Senses"

Bay Area trip-hop artist Artemis’ latest CD, ‘Gravity’ (RTFM Records/Magnatune/Cyberset) is a sensual blend of daydreamy beats and starry-eyed breaks. Keyboard Magazine called the New York native's self-described ‘lush, symphonic electronica’ a ‘world-class creation.’ We just call it damn good! - San Francisco Examiner / Bill Picture


"Unsigned Artist of the Month"

The artwork and packaging of Artemis' self-made CD 'Undone' is quite impressive, but it's the opening track 'Charming Gun' that earned this San Francisco Bay Area team our Unsigned Artist of the Month honors. The CD is the collective effort of singer/electronica artist Artemis and producers Bombastique (Keith Crusher) and dBs (David Earl).

"Everything on the CD was done using very modest equipment," Keith writes, "including several virtual synths from Native Instruments, Propellerheads and Emagic. We financed everything ourselves, and now we're looking for exposure in the hope that we'll be able to sell enough copies to do it all over again. This debut album is testament to the fact that great music can and does happen in small places - living rooms, no less - with nothing more than a few computers, a good pair of ears, and a treasure chest of creativity."

Charming Gun is a gorgeous soundscape comprising moody, lush pads, earthy percussion, and driving drum & bass rhythms. Love those spacey synth and percussive effects too. Artemis turns in a sedate, haunting vocal that blends well with the track. Major kudos to the production team for this world-class creation. - Keyboard Magazine


"If you like Olive and Esthero..."

If you like Olive and Esthero, you are going to loooove Artemis. With a voice like Olive's more confident sister, and an electronic sound that is as rich and tactile as Braille, there is no doubt that we are going to be seeing a lot more of Ms. Robison.

With only seven songs, you are going to be screaming, writhing for more. The combination of great writing, a beautiful, ethereal voice that immobilizes you with its rawness, its honesty, and electronic programming that will have your body rockin' in no time, is seriously lethal. With an even number of slow and more tripped up songs, you will find something for every occasion, any time of day. "charming gun" is clear and clean like the smell of fresh cut grass, and smooth as a chocolate milkshake. "changing sky" is sweeping and swirling with eerie vocals and beats and envelopes you from the very first note. "supernatural" is like a post-modern lullaby - sweet and quiet. Artemis' voice reaches heavenly notes and the programming is absolutely brilliant - not too little, not too much. "undone" is tres funky and strong electronics only enhance the immense talent that is Artemis. "slow progression" - totally instrumental. Only regrettable thing about this song is the absence of Artemis' gripping vocals. "beside u" is a dangerous cocktail of ethereal and sex. "don't look back" is futuristic with an infectious slow beat that will leave you breathless. Artemis' songs are eloquently written with lyrics that are poetic and charming all at once...You can see the intensity and intelligence here. It is ripe with boldness, with fearlessness and with good intention. This is refreshing to see in the world of female artists. But don't be misled. Artemis is like no other female artist before. She is smarter and she is oh-so-good you are going to play this CD over and over and over again, until you wear it out and have to order another copy. - Estrogen Music


"Undone is impressive!"

Undone is the impressive debut release from electronica chanteuse Artemis. The album fuses raw, introspective lyrics with modest electronic production and the results are often breathtaking. “Charming Gun” features stripped-down drum & bass rhythms and spacey vocals, and works much like Madonna’s “Frozen” did. The tempo is slowed considerably on the ambient lullaby “Supernatural”, a stellar display of Artemis’ singing ability. The highlight is “Changing Sky”, which works with its dark mood, accented by a bubbling synth track and eerie vocals. “Slow Progression” is a well-produced instrumental interlude that lives up to its title and leads into the altered vocals of “Beside U”. Closing out the release is “Don’t Look Back”, another standout song that features a multi-layered track complete with sweeping keys, an infectious fuzzy bassline and tripped-out beats. Undone was recorded and produced by Bombastique (Keith Crusher) and dBs (David G. Earl), and their lush widescreen soundscapes are perfectly matched to Artemis’ heavenly vocals. At 7 tracks, this EP serves as an introductory teaser more than anything and thankfully a full-length album is expected later in the year. Artemis is likely to draw comparisons to everyone from Sarah McLachlan to Everything But The Girl, but her songwriting skills and vocal style stand on their own ground. She succeeds in building on the influences of her peers and creating something unique, making Undone a captivating listen. - Urbnet [Bradley Miller]


"Sublime"

Local musician Artemis has been turning heads and catching ears with her independently released full-length, Undone, which ranks with Sigur Ros and Thievery Corporation in mastery of pure ambience and sublimely understated use of electronic technology for maximum emotive effect. The singer/songwriter casts her husky, rich alto over smart beats and dark textures, resulting in one of the very best ambient/trip-hop records to grace San Francisco in the last year. Each track strives for ultimate atmosphere --- “Slow Progression,” for instance, yields a stratospheric world of puffy clouds and floating rays of light through subdued synth strains and quietly sobbing strings. The elegiac music deftly complements Artemis’ alternately abstract and explicit lyrics, whose weighty substance lends a particularly poetry to each track.

The polished rhythms and celestial auras make for a captivating listening experience – from her cooing whispers to her emotive wails, Artemis fills Undone with genuine feeling, belying the record’s mechanical backbone.

[MK] According to your bio, you have performed as a solo acoustic musician before. Where does that fit in with Undone? Do your acoustic singer/songwriter tendencies take a back seat when dealing with songs that are so electronically biased, or do you still write all your songs by strumming a guitar?

[A] None of the songs on Undone were conceived with a guitar. I performed and wrote with a guitar first because it was the easiest and most convenient and portable thing to pick up and start playing. Not that I think playing guitar is easy, but I always wanted to write electronic music. I just needed to gather the tools and the skills to do so. Now I write with a keyboard, a computer, and with the melodies that run around in my head. The fact that I am a singer and songwriter never takes a back seat though --- I love hearing and creating a great groove, but my inclination is to give it the form of a song and tell a story or just express something lyrically. What I love about electronic music is that the horizons are limitless --- music can be made with the most natural and acoustic or the most alien and inorganic of sounds (I like a little of both), and the only boundary is your own imagination. This is an amazing time to be making music.

[MK] As I'm sure you've heard before, your songs bear some similarity to Sarah McLachlan's more electronically oriented material as well as Everything But the Girl. Are these parallels intentional, or do comparisons like that tend to bug you?

[A] These parallels certainly aren't intentional, but if I let comparisons bug me I’d be letting myself in for some bad days! People will always make comparisons as a way of finding a point of reference to something new, and it is sometimes helpful to other listeners as a clue to what the new thing might be a little like. It can also be helpful to the artist in trying to describe their music to someone looking for a point of reference --- artists are often too close to their own music to make objective comparisons, and we usually think nobody in the world sounds like us --- we're usually wrong, of course. Everything is derived and influenced by one thing or another.

[MK] What musicians do you usually compare yourself with?

[A] The kind of music that really inspires me comes from artists like Matmos and Bjork and Lamb, because they seem to approach music like real pilgrims, exploring a world that's been turned over millions of times already, always with a keen ear to reveal wonderful, secret new places, or make music of sounds one would never expect to hear as music --- completely ignoring convention or using it merely as a tool to create and say something totally unconventional and unexpected. I really admire music made in that kind of
spirit. And lyrically, both Bjork and Lamb write with gorgeous poetry and integrity, which turns me on and resonates with where I come from when I write.

[MK] What have you been up to since Undone was released?


[A] I’ve been working on new material for the next CD, which is well on its way. My co-conspirators and I have been working hard at getting the label up and running, and putting together some great live shows incorporating all the RTFM [Records] artists. [RTFM is the label started by Artemis, Bombastique and dBs.] Another fun shenanigan since Undone was getting to record a dance track with Duran Duran's former manager over in England last fall. Maybe you'll hear Artemis at Ibiza.

[MK] The recording and production on the album are exceptional. Where was it recorded, and how did you achieve such a professional sound? The liner notes cite Bombastique and deepBluesecret, who are they?

[A] Bombastique is also known as Keith Crusher, and dBs is David G. Earl. They are responsible for the exceptional recording and production on Undone--- all the songs were written and recorded in our home studios in San Francisco and Oakland, on very modest equipment including a few Macs, Logic Audio, some virtual synthesizers from Emagic and Propellerheads, a couple trusty Eprime keyboards, and a few pairs of darn good ears. Trevor Sadler of Mastermind Productions did a great job with the mastering, too. Bombastique and deepBluesecret are artists of phenomenal talent both as producers and musicians.

[MK] How did you get to where you are today, musically speaking? Was this influenced in any way by living and working in the Bay Area, seeing as how the region is especially receptive to electronica?

[A] Well, I moved here because I knew this was the place to make electronic music. I have no idea how I knew this, because looking back, I think I really knew diddly about electronic music when I came here four years ago. Most of the great electronic music I’ve heard, I’ve heard since I came to the Bay Area, though I think the area seems more inundated by DJ culture than by live electronic music. But I’ve been totally inspired by the dance scene too, and I get lots of great lyrics from people babbling amazing things at dance parties. And the availability of great live electronic music in the area will be getting a whole lot better, if I have anything to say about it.


- Altar Native - Matthew Kalinowski


"World Class"

"World class vocalist and production...sounds like Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, and Fiona Apple rolled into one" - Roy Elkin - Founder of Broadjam.com


Discography

Treasure EP - 1999
Undone - 2001
Red Bull Ascension Compilation - 2004
Gravity - 2005
Orbits (remixes) - 2007
Digital Bliss Vol. 1 - 2007
Cyberset - Music from the New Edge Vol. 1 - 2007
Destination Lounge SF Vol. 2 - 2007

Many of our tracks have streaming and radio play on stations like Groovera, Groove Salad (Soma.fm), KCRW, SJSU, Pirate Cat and a host of other college and internet radio stations, podcasts, etc.

Photos

Bio

Breathing a rich dose of soul into the cool digital world, Artemis brews up seductive sonic concoctions, deftly weaving poetry and pure emotion into psychoacoustic landscapes pulsing with life both otherworldly and organic. With her roots in classical and folk music, training in vocal traditions from several corners of the globe, and an ear for innovation, Artemis puts electronic music's limitless spectrum to bold use. Her style ranges from sparse and sparkling to richly symphonic, blending elements of trip-hop, downtempo, drum and bass, breakbeats, and electro-pop to create a potent fusion set ablaze with siren vocals as riveting as they are intimate.

Artemis is joined by fellow members of electronic artist collective RTFM for live performances featuring Artemis on vocals, flutes and theremin, Keith Crusher on bass, programming and live effects, Daniel Berkman on handsonic percussion, African kora, keys and guitar, and Cliff Tune on V-drums. Ben Davis (reFRACTion) rounds out the show with engaging lighting/video and set design. Artemis's sibylline lyrical vision and a posse of extraordinary artists of sound and light weld a hypnotic synergy, offering the audience an inspiring aural and visual journey.

Artemis releases Gravity (2005) and Undone (2001) have garnered praise and press in publications from the New York Times to Remix, Electronic Musician and Keyboard magazines. Artemis is a top seller with online music label Magnatune, and is signed with Cyberset, a new-edge label focused on progressive music in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her music receives airplay in the U.S. and internationally, and has been licensed for television, video and compilations. Her team's pioneering production techniques have been published by the Berklee Press and Remix Magazine, and her tracks are used to teach online music production courses at Berklee College of Music. Artemis has recorded and collaborated with producers worldwide including Toby Marks of Banco de Gaia, and former Duran Duran manager Paul Berrow. Artemis and her band are currently in the studio working on their next release, due in 2008.

www.artemis.fm
www.rtfmrecords.com
www.magnatune.com
www.cyberset.cc