“I think sidechaining is a perfect mirror image of what’s going on in society right now. It’s an analogy to a society of market criers. A struggle for survival of sounds…
[Sidechaining] introduces a new elements into music because it’s a very efficient way of eliminating the need to arrange elements to interact meaningfully. Just press them down. Sound design once freed you from thinking about harmonic relations, now sidechaining further frees you from arranging elements spectrally. Instead, a hierarchy is established in which the kick drum is God. Then there’s the snare and the bass, and anything else may breathe only if these three rest. You’re listening to a permanent struggle of characters pushed under water that desperately try to draw a breath. King snare then bangs everything away every time. Such treatments of sound are way more influential for where music goes than any new form of synthesis. This kind of sidechaining was theoretically possible sixty years ago. And it’s interesting that it became prevalent only now.”
– Mike Daliot in Stefan Goldmann, Presets–Digital Shortcuts to Sound (2015), pp. 90-91.
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