7 posts tagged “reason”

"Whats, what's your, er, plan?"
"My plan? I haven't got one"

Title track of my latest EP, this is an overtly symphonic piece in which I had a lot of fun working with the Miroslav orchestra brass and choir samples, and slipped in a snippet of dialogue recorded on a mobile phone while out and about.

A couple of people have commented that this track reminds them of Phillip Glass's soundtrack to Koyaanisqatsi, which wasn't the original intent but I'm not complaining about the comparison. It's got some of that rousing feeling and was in fact party inspired by a film in the first place, though primarily for the piano playing - The Beat That My Heart Skipped / De battre mon cœur s'est arrêté

You can download this track for free here, along with the rest of The Drift EP

One of the most haunting and arresting books I've read in a long while was Cormac McCarthy's The Road, a novel punctuated with the recurring phrase "he glassed the blacktop", as the Father and boy undertake their tense journey of survival. The blacktop is their only means to escape, holds the hope of delivering them to safety, while also harbouring threats which demand constant vigilance and mistrust. And so they persevere day after day, pushing on into the unknown, the Father striving to remain optimistic and maintain his son's belief and security.

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Photo by marktaylor7 

Last summer I visited Benllech in Anglesey for the first time in many years. I used to go there as a kid to visit my grandparents, who retired there, and going down to the beach brought back lots of happy memories. We walked along Benllech beach to Red Wharf Bay, which as a child seemed an enormous distance away, but now is just a pleasant ten minute stroll to a wide inlet with sandbanks, beached fishing boats, and a decent pub overlooking the bay. I always liked the name, and associate it closely with my grandparents' Welsh collie Bryn, who when he wasn't trying to round up gulls used to slip off out of sight, and would invariably be tracked down hours later somewhere in the bay. It's a beautiful spot that inspired something uplifting and celebratory.

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Photo by icyblue

Here's a new track which grew out of tinkering with a repeated guitar figure - double-tracked, harmonised and looped to within an inch of its life...

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Photo by botheredbybees

This instrumental was written for a recent soundtrack project, and features violins and cellos at the heart of the track - something I hadn't done for a while, spurred on in part by getting hold of the the Miroslav Philharmonik library for Reason. I expect there'll be more on the way soon as I explore it. So far I've been mostly impressed, apart from the over-elaborate vibrato on some parts.

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Photo by Pandiyan

Meta: Download the mp3

A song originally about an old violin teacher called Meta [meeyta], weekly visits, old performance photos on the wall, and the woozy feeling from the always-raging gas fire

Revisited a couple of years later, slowed down, cut up, and orchestrated in reason

And lyrically turned into a more suggestive and sinister song of a honey trap, with the leaky old gas fire now central

(with apologies to Meta)

Photo by pellaea, creative commons

Benito: Download the mp3

The name carries associations with bendito (blessed), bandito (bandit), and a favourite Terry Allen album, via Mexican president Benito Juarez. It roughly translates to Little Benny too, which I stuck with for no other reason than it makes me smile

This was recorded on a classical guitar played into a 4 track, then unleashed in Reason with the zeal of the neophyte