The original concept for my 'Skate' LP was to make a record that usurped the deterministic spiral (and the 'anti-skate' mechanism) as a way of playing and listening to sound on vinyl. To do this I developed the 'Fragmented' cutting technique, a method of cutting a concentric collage of individual short 'sound scars' onto the disc. When played, the stylus navigates it's own random path across this intermittent terrain of physical/sonic diversions. The type of record player, its speed and the user will all affect the result and thus each and every playback of the LP will elicit a different composition.
After much research it proved unfeasible to experiment in a professional cutting room to develop this process. I decided then to build my own lathe by converting and inverting the acoustic sound reproduction mechanism of an HMV wind up 78rpm gramophone. Using a car stereo system I positioned a pair of speakers so that they played 'backwards' into the sound funnel and thus ultimately back into the stylus. The stylus then acted as a vibrating cutting head when enough volume was applied. A 14" blank acetate was placed on the turntable and rotated at varying speeds using the gramophone's sprung mechanism. By very quickly and placing the stylus/cutting head onto the disc I built up the final collage sound by sound. I used the collected works of Pierre Schaeffer (a pioneer of vinyl manipulation) for the source sound. Only a proportion of each sound scar was influenced by those specific vibrations as this rudimentary cutting process was one of loss and accumulation.

The LP is intended to be the starting point for 'real time' explorations by the user. It works very well as a repetitive device if you place an obstruction (like a 7") in the path of the tone-arm as it locks the stylus into a loop. Another method is to play the record by just using your hand to rotate it slowly instead of at 33 or 45. This produces a much more subtle and controlled result. My personal favourite is to use the Tri-Phonic or Twin to play several sequences simultaneously! As the LP travels at a fixed speed all the arms play at the same tempo and thus 'polymix' perfectly. Experiment with it.