So this track was created as part of a challenge. The task was to create a "soundscape" that invoked the following words/emotions; suspense and unfolding. I decided to use the ambassel scale for this so every note played is taken from this one scale. I suppose it is worth mentioning the spoken excerpts, as they are actually quite topical. The whispered one is from a book called "The Art of Coercion" by Antonio Giustozzi: "In the absence of an open and serious challenge to the state, political policing is bound to be controversial, and the more so if it is highly centralised... no matter how much police powers are formally controlled by an insistence of due process, objective expert evidence or independent arbitration, their application, which is the work of the police services, is essentially arbitrary. Moreover, the complexity of the administration in modern societies is such that if all laws and police ordinances were to be universally enforced, all citizens would be criminals.”

The one spoken in a deep voice is from a book called "The Next 100 Years" by George Friedman: "Speed, range, and accuracy - and a lot of unmanned aircraft - will substitute for the massed forces that were required to deliver explosives to the battlefield in the twentieth century. Yet these talents will not solve a core problem in warfare, occupying hostile territory. Armies are designed to destroy armies, and precision weapons will do that more effectively than ever before. But occupation of territory will remain a labor-intensive activity. It is, in many ways, more akin to police work than to soldiering. A soldier's job is to kill an enemy, whereas a policeman's job is to identify a lawbreaker and arrest him."

The main passage that can be heard in both ears is from "The Fourth Turning" by Neil Howe: "A Crisis era begins with a catalyst - a startling event (or sequence of events) that produces a sudden shift  in mood. Once catalysed, a society achieves a regeneracy - a new counterentropy that reunifies and reenergises civil life. The regenerated society propels towards a climax -a crucial moment that confirms the death of the old order and birth of the new."

So you can see here a theme of suspense and an unfolding of that suspense, which I think actually plays well against the current geopolitical backdrop.

...and Birth of the New

This is a track written for a good friend's birthday as a musical birthday wish. "Boogie Bear" used to be this mythical entity that would guide the stoned in my teenage fantasies created in conjunction with this friend. I guess it is an inside joke.

Boogie Bear

Another song that spawned from a challenge to create a re-invention of the blues. I started with Hendrix's "Catfish Blues" (originally a Robert Petway composition made famous by Muddy Waters) and disaggregated the various elements so that different noises together produced the whole riff. The noises are meant to sound like the emanate from a swamp or bayou and are inspired by bullfrogs and mosquitos. Eventually the riff is formed (to pay hommage to the past) but then transformed again into a pseudo-Klezmer/Balkan strum. The lyrics are sung in Polish and, for those that cannot translate, describe the complaints of a tired man who wishes he was a bullfrog (actually a toad to be literally accurate as the Polish word for "toad" (ropucha) sounds better here) so that he could eat up all the flies that circle him. Life is hard he admits, in a hat-tip to the style where blues is often sung about hardship and acceptance of life's difficulties. Aside from the deviation from classic blues by having an Eastern-European (white man) sing about hardship (you cannot say that the Poles did not suffer hardship in their time) the other elements that deviate from standard blues are the multiple solo instruments, where there usually is one. You have a few guitar tracks competing for attention and also a keyboard solo. The track returns to the swamp from which it came, which is really what the blues are about: after the complaint is complete, little has changed other than the lasting emotion on the listener of the complaint itself. In essence, the sadness of the blues is the fact that they come with no resolution, they are in fact the state of affairs, the status quo.

Bullfrog Blues

My father wrote something like this back in the 70s and submitted it to some European musical composition contest in Monaco. This is my take. It is unfinished and I hope someday to return to it and add in a few more layers and solos. A friend described it as "the soundtrack to a really ballin' level of Super Mario Bros.".

Mediterranean Blues

Another track written for a friend for his birthday. We used to jam together. Actually, we started what was my first real band in high school. He always injected a good dose of humour into his music and in recent years started writing very creative and clever tracks for a lot of our friends in a pseudo-biographical format where he would match up their life story to a music genre they particularly enjoyed. He wrote songs for everyone, except of course himself. I decided to fix that. He is a fan of salsa and African beats so I created this track in hommage.

Merry Merry Maruan

Please pardon the singing, my voice is no longer what it once may have been (which was never much to begin with). The song builds on a riff I wrote in high school but never really developed further. I had to think of lyrics and in the depth of the COVID lockdowns, I wrote what you hear. I'm not a great lyricist nor do I pay particular attention to lyrics. It would be good to collaborate with someone eventually to fill up the vocal space in this song as it clearly requires this element.

COVID Blues

Covid Blues

An old idea from high school that never developed further. It needs a solo and some additional parts but the ideas are to have this ostinato in the background that can be eery and at the same time funky depending on what you layer over top.

Gettin' There

Gettin There

So this was one of my first ideas created with my Orba when it finally arrived in the middle of the COVID lockdowns. I had fun playing with this device and that inspired me to start exploring music again and actually recording things for the first time... ever! This is a half-baked idea but I think it has potential. There is something that builds here and creates tension and that is good when coupled with beats inspired by Stanton Moore.

It Is Almost Here

It's Almost Here

This is my first midi composition. I'm just messing around with Garage Band trying to figure out what it can do (and what it allows me to do). We start with a series of piano runs that merge into something reminiscent of a Chopin prelude. At this point I started thinking of MacBeth and the point where Duncan is murdered. So the prelude bit can be seen (or heard?) as a form of funeral progression. The interesting moment in MacBeth follows shortly after the murder with the knocking on the gate, hence the drum that comes in sounding like a door knock before turning into a metal riff and nonsense guitar riffing over top. Merry-making and nose-painting indeed!

Nosepainting

Nose-painting

Output of another challenge from a musical friend to create a track that reflects Groovy Swamp Blues.

Mortimer Sly

Popular tracks