Photo reblogged from COULEURS with 3,391 notes
Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911)
SUMMER
1907
Source: yama-bato
On changing…
I’ve got label stuff sorted for The Blackbirds’ Revenge, which is good - coming soon to a cassette label near you (or probably not, unless you live in Finland). I was thinking about how different it will seem compared to my previous albums, but in many ways it shouldn’t come as too much of surprise. It depends how you perceive my previous music. Part of the shunning of Aeolian Landform, the 2010 releases and other stuff from my catalogue was due to it not seeming personal. While my first three albums might not seem personal, they weren’t massive widescreen soundtracks either. Purlieu was based very much on the Leicestershire countryside I was so familiar with; Vacuum Road Songs started with my fascination with city life and ended with my experience of it; Safernoc explored my interest and fascination with ghost stories, myths and legends. Otherwise, Since Every Hour is Too Late adopted a track-by-track emotional approach, and Leaf Pass was more gentle, rural and even acoustic in sound, with the presence of an actual song - ‘Anticipated Lies’ (admittedly muffled and placed in the background). The Blackbirds’ Revenge - and my music to come - will continue in the spirit of all of these albums, but particularly the elements of the last two albums that I highlighted there. The music will remain as personal (and inspired by my life and surroundings) as ever - maybe just in a slightly more obvious way.
It’s rather typical that as I’m rounding things up for Second Thought - just two months to go - the name is getting more attention than ever before. I’ve had several positive reviews for Safernoc, Since Every Hour is Too Late and Leaf Pass lately, and the Nearby Forest mix is now available to download from The New Worck. And another appearance on an FSOL Electric Brain Storm mix. After a long period of self-doubt, the last few months have seen such genuine interest and passion for my music that it’s really settled my mind.
In slightly less positive news, college didn’t work out too well, for a number of reasons that I shan’t go into here. So music is slightly higher on the agenda again, but I’m still on the playing guitar and coming up with little ideas front rather than taking it much further - once I get some more recording equipment and The Blackbirds’ Revenge is out, I can maybe make some progress. Next year probably.
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An amazing piece of music
What is an amazing piece of music? In an amazing piece of music, I feel every chord. It is not just a collection of simultaneously played notes, but a feeling, an emotion or an image. A chord sequence that can continually pound me with this feeling, heightening the experience with each successive chord; that exists in a fantastic piece of music. Notes have an inevitability, a knowledge that at some point they’ll reach a peak and cascade down with a force of beauty so powerful that it genuinely overtakes me; staggers me; sometimes actually leaves me gasping for breath. A fantastic piece of music takes me somewhere else. The best music makes certain that I forget I exist in this world: not just a brief diversion, but a genuine belief that I am somewhere else. Somewhere better. Each sound and texture is as real and visual and vibrant as the grains of sand in a desert, or the concrete of a wall, or the successions of ripples that form waves that form the sea. No exaggeration, no metaphor: musical textures that are just as real as these.
This is the music I would like to make too.
Some people might be mistaken in thinking that being one of those people who is constantly recording is a good thing. It’s not! Well, it has its down sides, at least. For a while I’ve been worrying that I’m actually working on too much music, but then I remember even around the time of Purlieu I was recording that, and almost an album’s worth of material that didn’t make it onto the album, and a couple of 2T Records, and a So Far So Good album, and some nonsense as Rory and the Smendles, and still at college and persuing a social life. So perhaps it’s not so odd that, given the fact I have nothing to do at the moment, I’m coming up with a lot of new music. It’s all being put into different boxes on different themes. I’ve decided to revisit the original ideas behind Vacuum Road Songs (long before it turned into the maddening journey through a city story it was planned to be a more grim sounding soundtrack to a rather scary part of a city - think Burial’s first album in mood), a ghost story themed album inspired by a car trip near Hinckley, the electro-acoustic experiments I’ve spoken of before, the old tape collage, and a box for general stuff that might get used in the future. I’m getting in touch with labels to see what will be released where and when. Hopefully a few bits and bobs will be out over the course of 2011.
I spent much of yesterday playing with a melodica, writing, recording, manipulating sounds. It works very well at forming an ambient backdrop, and I came up with some great sounds. I think I really need to get a guitar very soon. Given the opportunity to write tracks, rather than piece them together on the computer, it should slow down my progress without stopping me from being musical!
Return to instruments
It’s been a busy time in the studio over recent weeks. I think I’ve completed composition for my twelve-tone serial collection, I just need a good piano sound for three of those tracks. The rest will be electro-acoustic and more experimental in sound. I’ve also been contacting a few labels in regards to a couple of other projects I’ve been working on. I’ve received positive response about the pure music electro-acoustic pieces I mentioned in a previous entry, but won’t know any more until later in the year about that. I’m also sending out stuff for some more piano and string based music I’ve been working on with a ghostly theme. I’m very proud of the tracks, but an interesting thing happened during recording sessions: I recorded a piece for solo guitar, and really enjoyed the writing, recording and listening process, moreso than using samples and a piano synth at the computer. I decided then that from now (for a while at least, I change my mind often enough to make no permanent promises!) I want to actually stick to instruments I have. I’d like to get more instruments and work with them. Instead of going “I want to write music for these instruments”, I want to take the approach of arranging the music around what I have: a continuation of the self-limited sample palette I chose as a response to the over-indulgence in wide ranging synthesisers. I’ll still be using samples in an electro-acoustic way, but it might be a nice challenge to return to actual music - composition and performance - instead of sitting at a computer screen clicking buttons.
In other news, I’ve shifted over the physical releases from Jerky Oats on to a new label, Bullfinch Records. I want to release some electro-acoustic, modern classical and ambient music on CD in DIY packaging, and have a few artists lined up for release. It’ll be starting next year hopefully, and I want to release 2-3 CDs a year. Having a fresh label will not only help promote things, but also Jerky Oats really is a terrible name, thoroughly unsuitable for serious electro-acoustic music. So it’s much more fitting. Wish me luck!
At relatively short notice, Leaf Pass is out today, which can be downloaded for free by clicking here, courtesy of Treetrunk Records. I recently described the album as ‘the best accident I’ve ever had’ - it began life as a couple of longform Canal Seven-style pieces on a collection called Habitats 1-3, but I was just never very happy with it so I scrapped the release. Then, for reasons unknown to me, I decided to merge it together and split it into 16 tracks a la a normal album, and it all came together perfectly into a record I’m really proud of. Some of the material on the album is new stuff, some is very old - pre-Purlieu, from the Twenty-Four demo disc, for those of you who still remember it - but it all sits together nicely. The presence of pre-Purlieu material, combined with the sunny rural sounding beginnings, moving on to a more sinister end section, came together to make the album a bit of a prequel to Purlieu really. It’s a bit of a diversion from the modern classical direction of the last couple of albums and what’s to come, and was released now as a way to tie things up with Second Thought. This is the last of the five major albums.
I always intended to do linking albums, although it was never meant to end this way. I had four albums planned: Purlieu and Vacuum Road Songs, then Dead Hymns, a dark ambient/industrial album which had the listener going through a sort of ‘personal hell’, followed by Crib Goch, a spiritual reawakening based around piano and string pieces that would end the series. Instead, the hell was replaced by myths and ghost stories of Safernoc, and I took things one step further by tying the album up as a memory of how the journey began. That this managed to come out just as Second Thought was ending is a wonderful coincidence and basically makes me very happy.
Anyway, Leaf Pass is out now. A CDr version will be working its way to a few special people who’ve supported me and bought the other albums over the years. That’s the end of Second Thought, musically, the last new material to come out, the end of the story that some people have been following since 2002/2003 when I started work on material that made its way onto this album and Purlieu. It’s been quite a ride. I hope you enjoy the album!
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