The nature of the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting 

The Bicycle Delay was something like an “Albert Hoffman moment” (to quote a good friend and guitarist Neal Casal). I sat down with no plan of where I was going but to allow myself the freedom to be open to wherever the journey took me and just document the experience. Really a strange path to travel when it involves something as cerebral as programming software. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe that’s a pure form of creativity, to use the boundaries something so matter of fact as programming as a medium for art? The result was a pedal as autobiographical as any I have been involved in. The Bicycle Delay is a physical manifestation of the experience of consciousness, letting go of the desire to control everything, and maintaining a positive attitude to leave room for a positive experience.

The more time I spent with the Bicycle Delay the more it unfolded its complexities to me. The harder I thought about what it was doing, the more difficult it was to put my finger on it. The more that I surrendered to what it was showing me, the more it set me free to be musically creative. In much the same way it took a computer to visualize a Mandelbrot Set, it took the Bicycle Delay for me to find the organic beauty in disharmony. 

The way pedal behaves is also metaphoric to how I’ve been looking at life. Approach it from a negative perspective, go ahead, make it spiral downward. There is beauty in it, like there is enjoyment in picking at a scab. It’ll take you to darker musical places fitting for the vampires at night. It all depends on your mood. Bring it up, it wants to take off. Happiness in a madhouse. The most difficult and interesting stuff begins to happen when you keep it balanced. Edges of notes brighten radiantly to prominence, like the flora and fauna do when I walk Clemma in the early morning sun.

The Bicycle Delay is as organic as a computer growing from a tree. Sonically the pedal is ever changing, even turning the knobs has an amorphous behavior. Go with it.

• Circuit Design/Audio Engineer – Howard Gee
• DSP Engineer/Concept – Nicholas Harris
• Photography/Videography – Jessica Liu
• Artwork – David Medel Weirdbeard72