The task of taking apart Vivaldi’s Gloria, and putting it back together in a way that makes sense both harmonically and structurally 300 years after the original construction was not an easy one. The biggest hurdle was that so many of the musical motives are already charged with the harmonic language of the 18th century, a language very different from the one that composers use today. Thus, it ended up being a bit like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces had I to put back together largely using the musical equivalent of scissors and sticky tape.
 
The first movement uses fragments predominantly from that famous ‘Gloria, Gloria’ opening. Beginning with just a few notes, the motifs are gradually expanded over time, that most famous D octave leap that Vivaldi opens with as a kind of harmonic drone, a reference point that is revisited throughout the movement. The whole thing builds to a frantic climax.
 
The second takes Vivaldi’s playful ‘Domini Fili’ fugue and scatters its melody into bite-sized chunks thrown between the sections of the ensemble. Just as the melody bounces around the instruments, so too does the harmony, jolting in unexpected directions in an almost anti-fugal manner that offends the strictly academic rules of composition that Vivaldi would have used to compose.    
 
The third movement is underpinned harmonically by a fleeting but particularly juicy sequence in Vivaldi’s piece: the ‘Gratias Agimus Tibi’. This is slowed down so as to be unrecognisable, and treated in a gradually rising sequence towards a climactic finale of cascading oboes.
 
The melody throughout the piece is made up of sneaky references to every one of Vivaldi’s movements. Listen out if you know them- there’s something form every movement hidden somewhere.

Gloria in Fragments

The rhythms are from Africa, the modes are from China and Japan, the method of modulation is from THAILAND and everything else is from the heart.

Credit to this one for helping me mix>>> https://soundcloud.com/bandrewes



In Play (demo)

A little duet I wrote for me and my brother. It took pretty direct inspiration from a duet on the album Viêtnam: Musique et chants des Hmong, called 'Two Part Secret Song'  which has this kind of insane counterpoint which sounds as if its incredibly meticulous worked out on the one hand, but at the same time like the two voices are completely off in their own worlds and have no awareness of the existence of the other. I tried transcribing it to manuscript but it proved IMPOSSIBLE.

The main idea going on here other than the counterpoint is that this little duet can be set to ANY haiku. I wrote it to numbers 1-17, i.e. the number of syllables in a haiku, and set it so that all the syllables would be jumbled creating funny nonsenses and then I chose the funnest most nonsensical haiku I could find, which happened to be by Richard Wright and goes:

With a twitching nose
a dog reads a telegram
on a wet tree trunk

What you hear is the result.

Twitching Clicks

The first of three nocturnal remixes of my Jeremy Kyle Show themed string quartet. This one I made. Headphones advised. 

Original quartet/video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blStoFK-2P8

Enjoi x

At the End of the Night- James Andrewes

The second of three nocturnal remixes of my Jeremy Kyle Show themed string quartet. This one is by BON aka Ben Andrewes.

Here's his lovely material: https://soundcloud.com/bandrewes


Original quartet/video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=blStoFK-2P8

Enjoi x

At the End of the Night- BON

The THIRD and final of three nocturnal remixes of my Jeremy Kyle Show themed string quartet. This one is by Muckers aka Matt Huxley .

Here's his product: 

https://soundcloud.com/matthuxleymusic
https://soundcloud.com/muckersmusic

Original quartet/video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=blStoFK-2P8

yay x

At the End of the Night- Muckers

A wonky ramble from the highlands to the forest to the swamp.

Rodney's Boggy Ramble

A lot of mad things have been happening recently. One of them was Brexit. I know that that shocked me and a lot of my generation into a state of crisis about our identity as europeans (whatever that meant to us individually), which is something we’d probably never really thought about til it was gone. Since that point, all this music that felt european in character to me, and which I might otherwise have dismissed as tasteless or cheesy or whatnot, has taken on this kind of bittersweet evocative power.  Camping holidays, TV ads for 100 Ibiza classics, Eurovision bangers of old, Italo House with accents so thick the lyrics can barely be heard. Its funny how musical meaning can shift due to external circumstances like this. So, I thought I would compile 1 hour and 20 minutes of opportunity to tearfully wallow in this aesthetic. I hope this mix can in some way aid you in your grieving process, as making it has helped mine.  

CONTENT WARNING: Trance

The EU Nostalgia Mix

Experience this properly with the video, here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blStoFK-2P8

(not the song from Les Miserables)

JamesAndrewes

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