Band 4

Chrome City Fusion

i grabbed the chance to work with the excellent stems from the great Insatiable Void !!!
Here is the original and the playlist
https://soundcloud.com/insatiable-void/sets/limited-remix-collab-by

Insatiable Void - Ancestry noxpox remix

Afro-funk II

Project RESIDUE (As the Crow Flies)

I met Dave Bayes on soundcloud, with his beautiful compositions and excellent guitarplay. We had already worked together. I needed a beautiful instrumental and he needed a voice,...look what happened. Hope you like it!

Zen warrior lyrics

I’m not the kind of girl
That you see in me
I not even come close to who you want me to be
You see in me some kind of fighter in your fantasy
You call me zen warrior
Well it isn’t me, it isn’t me it isn’ t me , no  no

I’m mostly calm and at ease, my breath is deep as a soft slow breeze
Live and let live, avoid the negative
I am I am I am totally zen
(4x)

You never see me start a fight
but don’t attack me
Don’t touch my basic right 
Wanna stay out of trouble
Don’t wanne make it double
Zen warrior zen warrior

Zen Warrior (collab Dave Bayes X Saskia Goethals)

'Maybe Another Time' a Jazz Fusion track that I recorded some time ago and overlooked. So here it is now and hopefully you'll enjoy the listen.
Alan

Or Is It All An Illusion

Maybe Another Time

She's Stacey

The melody and chord pattern were dreamed up in 1998, but the song has since undergone a rescue effort in 2024.

The song was originally called "Suzy Suicide," and I must admit it was a serious lyric missfire.  The title was also a little flippant.  I'm a mental health nurse these days, and upon re-visiting this I felt a strong need to change the lyric altogether. It does however still refer to something in a potentially similar vein, in my wanting to stay at least a little close to where the song was originally, with respect being high up, with a potential drop on the cards.  The first line is the only line from the original 1998 lyric.

In any case the original story was about someone leaping from the top of a building, only to change their mind halfway down, but is now about the activities of people like James Kingston, and other free climbers. The new lyric also takes some inspiration from Phillipe Petit in the same regard, thinking about some of the things he said about his harness-free tight rope walk atop the Twin Towers (World Trade Centre), effectively saying that such a passing, due to a fall from the wire, were it to have occurred, would have been a beautiful last moment of life.

In any case the lyric is pulling from those people, I suppose individuals who don't feel their cogs moving unless they're amid rather extreme experiences, without which, I suppose, they don't particularly feel connected to life. Such things turn my stomach, but I suppose, for some people, being on the brink of something like that makes them feel alive.

Anyway, that's what I was shooting at, however, it's quite esoteric, as far as lyrics go, and could easily mean some other odd thing to someone else.

Seems it took me 26 years to finish this one! 🤣

Lyrics

Climbing up the staircase
A few floors left to go
Time to end the chase
Feels like I’m nearly home
When I get to the top
I’ll find some space and time
I’ll step into a portal
Reach the other side

I feel the earth, it’s pull
It’s lure feels stronger than a fire in the cold, yeah
won’t cover too much distance,
if I glide below
If I slipped it might feel like dreaming
And give me some new lifetime
Within a few short seconds
I might feel some kind of lifeline

There’s nothing here inside
No signals just my vital signs of life
Signs I don’t recognise
Nothing is clear behind these darkened eyes
But signs of life below
Some sign of other worlds that I could know
If just inside my mind
Some sign of light to brighten up these eyes
Some sign of life

I didn’t miss the news
But seems I’m none the wiser
It suits my tranquil solitude
The drum of nonsurvivors
They say don’t look down
But that just blunts emotion
I’m petrified but energised
Life could be over, just that notion!

I’m captured by an epic view
my gorgeous guiding spirit
The lights all twinkle down below
Their sparkle so explicit
I feel a surge beneath my feet
A foot forward, but I'm stable
I’m gonna trust the air I feel
I’m slipping free from all my labels

There’s nothing here inside
No signals just my vital signs of life
Signs I don’t recognise
Nothing is clear behind these darkened eyes
But signs of life below
Some sign of other worlds that I could know
If just inside my mind
Some sign of light to brighten up these eyes
Some sign of life

Signs Of Life (1998 / 2024)

The Lantern Fouling the Brittle Air, Listening to the Dog and the Echo

method: first, I created a shaman-monk-version (mostly ‚Gregorian‘ voice and jaw harp) on cassette tape (this is where some of the noise - especially in the first section - derives from) and zoom r20 with a vacuum-tube pre-amp for the voice ….. all of which I then treated like a field recording sample in Samplitude - sculpting it with vst instruments and effects. 
narration: it feels like I have sonified this poem a million times before …. which might be the case because I have lived through it that often - I and others I dearly care for …. but then again … I might have actually done so. it is also part of the cycle SONIC CASCADE published in  A SINGLE LOOP OF FORTUNES. Alternative titles are ‚TWO-PLACE‘ and ‚04s SAMPLE‘. For this publication, I simplify the title to  ‚SAMPLE‘.
Image: copyright jo richter. you see some of the instruments used in the shaman-monk-version, arranged with a bracelet as though displayed in a museum. 

poem / copyright jo richter:

two-place sleeps on the ground
and still doesn‘t know where it is -
all of its strings sound sound
in heaven-hellish bliss -
nothing, it says, goes amiss
that doesn‘t want to be found

sample

I've been writing songs for ages and ages, because it's something I enjoy doing, and that's about it. 

I've added dates to titles, however, these aren't always dates recorded, mostly just dates written because the original offerings, back then, had little to be desired with consideration to production values and all that stuff!  For the older tracks some tracks have the old backing with a modern vocal (often with a lyric rewrite), the original vocal with a new backing (when I could work with the original vocal, but not the original backing), the original song newly recorded in all areas, and less often the original vocal and backing, but with a few additions, "No" is one such example.  Otherwise, most of it is newer stuff, post 2018, and is as is, when written and recorded.    

I've had to re-record some things on account of my abilities to record demos and all that being very limited once upon a time.  

In the early days I only had a Farfisa F1 workstation thing (it's amazing what I managed to do on that), later an Atari ST, with Cubase 2 probably, a Proteus 2000, and Fostek 8 track recorder thing, and now I've got Native Instruments 14, and Cubase 12, in what amounts to an astonishingly good set up compared to my earlier resources, for about the same money as that older rubbish was back then. 

I still use the microphone I've had since I was 18, though did just recently upgrade that as well, however still pick up and use the old one, as it's still good - a Sure SM58 with a dent in it! My upgraded mic is a Sure SM7B, which is great, and I see it all the time on TV and podcasts, so must have made a good choice! 

My musical chops are focused on the piano, my main instrument, and the ukulele, which I play a lot as well.  Not doing a lot of piano-orientated songs at the moment, but I do sometimes, and mostly try to get the best out of my Native Instruments stuff.  I'm barely scratching the surface with all of the NI stuff I've got.

Signs Of Life (1998 / 2024)

Dirk Diamond

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