Latest Music
Here is an ever expanding collection of new music, composed and produced after leaving the BBC. They are pieces either specifically written for the Radiophonic Workshop band or created from experiments with different techniques and software.
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This piece was a very long time in the making. I decided to start the music using an obscure Native Instruments synth called Skewell, and at the same time develop a video of the screen images of the synth itself. All a bit convoluted but after many months, the music and the video evolved into ‘The Chance’. One of only a few newer pieces that have a space theme.
Image: 3D model sourced from Turbosquid. Background image captured from Native Instruments Skewell Synth. Assembled in Blender
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A student of mine at the National Film and TV School wrote a piece about a sound that she couldn’t identify in her flat. It started me thinking and over a year afterwards, this is what emerged. This is hard to pin down, enigmatic and a rather unnerving. By the way, the sound in the flat? It turned out to be the electric gate to the underground car park!
Image realised in Artmatic Designer and assembled in Acorn.
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When the band played in Hamburg, our drummers Kieron Pepper and Bob Earland were jamming together during the rehearsal and Mark Ayres recorded it on his iPhone (the video is in the Geek Room). A few synth lines later, it turned into ‘Tattoo’.
Image created in Acorn.
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An experiment using phrases produced by a pre-programmed generative sequencer, edited and assembled as an accompaniment to live playing. When is random spontaneous, and round the other way?
Thank you to Prettysleepy from Pixabay for the cover ingredients.
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The entire piece is derived from a location sound recording made in the Canary Islands, where cars driving onto a ferry shifted the massive metal ramp and created amazing whining harmonics. (See Blog).
Thank you to Clker-Free-Vector-Images and johnnyjohnson20430 from Pixabay for the cover ingredients.
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The whole saying goes ‘Art is Nothing without Science’ and there’s no doubt that all electronic pioneers would have been lost without the science, however wonderful their art was. This quasi baroque avant garde piece is definitely tongue-in-cheek, which probably explains why most of the voices are so unitelligible!
Thanks to buzcajun from Pixabay for the paint drips. Image created in Artmatic Designer and Acorn.
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The idea originated when I was first testing out ‘The Mouth’, a plug in by Tim Exile. It could harmonise very naturally with vocal sounds and the whole track developed from there. Some of the wide synth arpeggios later in the piece were inspired by those vertical splayed propellor blades by the side of the M25 around Leatherhead (yes really!). Despite starting out as a spiritual piece, it evolved into a celebration of virtual worlds.
Cover from an image by Uki_71 on Pixabay adapted and supplemented in Acorn
There is a known psychological condition where the sufferer truly believes they are made out of a particular substance. I heard a radio programme on the subject and it gradually took shape as a treated poem, in the old Radiophonic style.
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"Easter Island Ahu Tongariki" by Ndecam, licensed CC BY 2.0
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This was originally titled ‘Like a Native’, due to every sound being derived from Native Instruments synths; even the last one, so reminiscent of Tomita. Hard not to include for nostalgic reasons.
Thanks to Cris Ramos and Gordon Johnson from Pixabay for the image ingredients. Assembled in Acorn.
In 2002 the Radiophonic Workshop teamed up with Rory Hamilton and Jon Rogers to present ‘Generic Scifi Quarry’. It was a three performance surround sound and projection show in an Oxfordshire quarry. I wrote three sections of the soundtrack. The title has been added after the event.
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Thanks to Image by Sergei Tokmakov, Esq. from Pixabay for our robotic friend. Background image created in Artmatic Voyager.
Another track from the 2002 playback concert ‘Generic Scifi Quarry’. This one worked well in surround sound across the expanse of the quarry, so the stereo version here has lost some of its effect especially in the futuristic traffic section, but the overall atmosphere remains.
Listen to the whole track on Spotify, Deezer, Apple and more.
Listen to the whole track on Spotify, Deezer, Apple and more.
The guitar phrases in the verse have been around for years, literally decades, but I never found a use for them in a piece until now. As soon as the electronic layers were added it took on a Japanese flavour which naturally lead to it being called ‘Haiku’.
Blossom photo treated in Acorn.
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