For a while I had been looking for a soprano to work with. Then one day, I was walking in gougan Barra (a remote national park) and I heard a soprano singing off in the mountains - not really what you expect out there. I didn't approach for I didn't want to bother her (should have bothered her).
The mountains provided a perferct amphitheatre for her voice and informed this composition - there are many worlds in here - the music itself is a repeating pattern that repeats every three octaves but can in theroy spiral infinitely downwards (or upwards). The endless rising and falling mirrors the landscape and the downward spiraling is a spiraling into the dreamworld of the ancients via the minds of the swans in Gougan. A note oon the swans - in Irish mythology, swans are seen as bridges to other worlds (Tir Na nOg, or the land of the ever living living ones) since they live in three worlds -those of earth, air and water.
One could easily go wandering in gougan, find an opening in the rocks, descend down, down, down to the land of the golden apples and maybe never return....

Gougan Aria

This started as a synth jam on a Saturday night - I was just exploring techniques with my favourite synth (U-he Repro 1 - a Prophet 1 emulation).
It soon escalated into an excercise in counerpoint, I couldn't help myself, sorry.
During the time of making the composition, my father passed away and it became about that time. It was going to be called "Farewell, old man" but I stuck ith the name Liberis which is the name of the childrens choir (via 8dio and Kontakt). The name seemed apt for far from it being a parting, it seemed more a completion and a liberation.
Hard to accurately name and describe such things, but there is a lot more to death than just tragedy, sorrow and loss, don't you think?

Liberis

This started as a simple academic excercise - lets write some counterpoint with phrases of different length based on the Fibonacci sequence. It ended up in a rabbit hole that became a sonic portrait of a sleeping dream I had shared with a friend - only time I have ever experience this.
One should never underestimate the power of mathematics on the psych or vica versa.
That is all.
Why Prague?
Well....

Prague

Very compplexico this one - this is pure indulgence in sonic painting.
Okay, I must confess, I did borrow a wee bit of one of the themes from "Skyscraper" (a song of my last EP), in fact, the second half of this track was originally a Skyscraper theme developement, only because an old friend insisted that I owed him a proper studio version of Skyscraper (the original was recorded live) so I thought I would do it but with knobs on; lots and lots of knobs!
The first half was an experiment on creating a musical shepard tone- maybe that worked, maybe it didn't, who cares?
Maybe if one decended into the depths of the world of golden apples in Gougan Aria, then you can take the hand of the shepherdess to lead you back to the ordinary world - should you want to....

Alan Mahn

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