ruinSite: Info Department

+ Who is Ruin?

Name: Philip Baljeu
Ruin was Born In: Sarnia, Ontario, Canada
Human Age: 21
Music Age: 6

Noxious gas toting 'Ruin' is the project of Phil Baljeu. 'Ruin's' musical stylings have been all over the map, but as of late is focusing more on texture, rhythm and FM synthesis. Using the cast away machines of a bygone age 'Ruin' forges his songs from the firery furnace of industrial into moldy peices of soundtrack fit for a film that never existed. This is music to smith metal to, shave to, run marathons to, beat up mlbutt to, etc. Please enjoy.

(from the Nineteen Eighty FourRuin Profile)

Guide to understanding Ruin:

1. He’s Canadian, quite young, and lives with his parents
2. He uses plenty of great, cheap gear, including electribes, paia, old fm synths, and sweet old tape machines
3. He builds his own modular gear, which contributes to the dirtiest sounds on earth
4. He loves him some Pansonic and Throbbing Gristle.
5. He owns a gas mask and takes hilarious pictures of himself in it
6. He’s capable of some intense sarcasm.

Dirty sounds, not like some squarewave through a resonant filter with fuzz on it, but dirt like oscillator crosstalk while the vca picks up some am talk radio station at 3 in the morning. Dirt like someone is pouring dirt into your ear. Dirt like getting lockjaw from eating an old rusty sandwich.

Scott Bruzenak sept 07

+ Studio Information (Straight From The Man Himself) (Circa "Cassette Coda Sessions")

I love this 'studio' like it was my own... er. Jomdom pressured me into doing this and I say noise studios need to be seen too! This is in the basement of my place of stay, my families home. It is in the corner of my practice room. It can get very moody looking with low lights, it makes a good atmosphere for making noise. I even have some colored lights, when the feel is right. I have 4 power bars, the power consumption is ridiculous. I use two stereo amps, one for 'monitoring' and one for the other people I sometimes jam with, so they can hear me.

Audio quality is not a concern with me, so I just have old speakers bought at flea markets. I have the Drum Trak being the clock master for the rest of my drum machines, the tr-626, tr-707 and DJxBII. The D-5 controls the sh-32, tx81z and esi32. I do a lot of jamming by myself in this room, making sometimes ambient, noise, industrial or glitch. I have my record player, tape players, vcr and radios running into the Realistic mixer, since it has a lot of RCA inputs, it also has two 1/4" which I plug a mic and my Sk-1 into. The Behringer mixer handles everything else, plus the line out of the realistic mixer. I like having movies play while I jam, so I can grab audio when I want, or just watch when I get bored. I need to buy a rack case to hold my rack gear, VCR and amp. I also need to buy a patch bay I think, I do a lot of patching and that would make it a lot easier... but that would mean more cables which I really don't have money for. You can tell this is a very Lo-Fi, Low-budget studio setup.

I don't have any specific reasons for choosing the gear I did, besides they were cheap and available. I like working with limits. I would rather get a lot of small/cheap gear, than buy one piece that can do it all. I like to have a lot of gear working together to make a mess of noise. I seem to always buy up what I can at the time. I am also a thrift store junkie, but my searches have always seemed to pay off; in little and sometimes great ways, I never leave empty handed.

My studio works well because I will always have inspiration to make music/noise, I never seem to run out of ideas when I am in the studio.

There you have it. My noise haven.

+ Studio Pictures (Behold... The Stuff!)

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