A lovely tribute, Jamie would be most impressed and touched. Well done Andy!

Massive shout out to my very clever 14 year old son Yianni: I asked him to do me an album cover that would reference the very famous Tubular Bells album cover using a photo I took on one of may walks in the Kettering countryside with his amazing 3D rendering software and he’s done an incredible job - better than the original I think! 

Given the cover and the fact track 2 is called “Tintinnabular Tubules” and has a very clear paraphrase of the famous opening figure from Mike Oldfield’s first album you don’t have to be a genius to work out where this album is coming from: This is “side 1” of my Oldfieldian ‘70s hippy instrumental album, an affectionate exploration of some of my childhood influences including also some more folky sounds from people like Andy Cronshaw and Martin Simpson. Apart from the tubular bells paraphrase it doesn’t use any particular pilfered melodies or harmonic progressions but rather the influences are sonic and stylistic. Hence the overall long form of the piece and the fact there are virtually no synthesisers or drums, but lots of guitars (real classical, acoustic, electric and bass, not samples, with the slight performance imperfections left in for authenticity), organs, and various acoustic instruments. Side 1 is in 5 roughly equal sections:

0.00 Over the Waters
6.31 Tintinnabular Tubules
12.19 Albion Summer
17.04 The Path Ascending
23.00 The Maiden’s Lament

Obviously in these days of streaming this is not really a “side” but the piece is conceived to be in the two movement form of the early Oldfield albums. Side 2 is currently in production and to follow in a few months! I hope my friends enjoy it!

Albion Summer Side 1

ForJamie

The first upload of my "eargarden" studio recording project: Elements of Tangerine Dream, Trent Reznor, Steve Reich and Dave Gilmour in here. Starts off as film music and develops into a cross between guitar hero and minimalism. Be interested to know what people think!

My music is free to download for your own enjoyment and to use in non-commercial youtube videos, projects, etc. as long as you credit me and include a link to my soundcloud page - https://soundcloud.com/eargarden.
Please ask my permission if you wish to use this music for any commercial purpose, sample it or remix it. – Charles@eargarden.com


heist

An idiosyncratic, lo-fi, dreamy, distorted and rather sad little piece I knocked up one rainy afternoon. The cover art is of a once-glamorous hotel corridor at Kupari in Croatia - there are a whole bunch of hotels on the beach there that have been completely deserted since the war 20 years ago and are gradually decaying.

My music is free to download for your own enjoyment and to use in non-commercial youtube videos, projects, etc. as long as you credit me and include a link to my soundcloud page - https://soundcloud.com/eargarden.
Please ask my permission if you wish to use this music for any commercial purpose, sample it or remix it. – Charles@eargarden.com


where no one ever goes

This is what I would call “dirty ambient” by which I mean quite long and boring like Eno, but with sounds which are more Reznor-ey: nasty and irritating instead of pure and beautiful ;-) Xina got me a nespresso machine for my birthday! It makes some lovely scratchy noisy sounds: A kind of steamy hiss, a droney hum when the coffee is being pressure pumped, a repetitive splurgey noise when the milk is being steamed, various huffs and puffs when it’s getting ready to do something or has just finished. Almost all the sounds in this piece are made of bits of nespresso sounds or associated coffee mug clinks and the door bell which I’ve crushed, stretched, looped, heavily EQed, pitch shifted, ring modulated, etc. (For the purists I’m afraid there are some Tibetan bell samples and arpeggiated mallet sounds from a physical modelling synthesizer as well.)

coffeetime

This is what I would call “ethnic ambient” or “ambient world music” – the closest thing I can think of would be some of Jon Hassell’s work including his collaboration with Brian Eno. I’ve always been impressed with composers like Hassell who go and live and study with musical gurus in far flung continents for years and then return to the west to combine eastern rhythms and harmonies with Western influences, always displaying great sensitivity to their performance practices and cultural sensitivities. Takes far too long though so I’ve basically just cobbled together some ethnic sounding percussion samples and then noodled around with breathy wind instrument sounds using a virtual modelling synthesiser (Logic Sculpture for anyone who cares).

My music is free to download for your own enjoyment and to use in non-commercial youtube videos, projects, etc. as long as you credit me and include a link to my youtube channel and soundcloud page - https://soundcloud.com/eargarden
Please ask my permission if you wish to use this music for any commercial purpose, sample it or remix it. – charles@eargarden.com


ForJamie

AndyGibbons

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