Having enjoyed making 'I am' back in 2006 I decided to give the whole poem/music combo thing another go. This time I chose 'A dream within a dream' by Edgar Allen Poe. Like many of the poems by Poe, it's probaly been used and abused plenty of times already so I thought one more couldn't hurt.

This track took an absolute age to put together. Not because it was complex, but because I had real trouble finding the right sound and parts for it. In the end I got a little fed up with it and just wanted it finished.

I have mixed feelings about the final result. On one hand it's instruments are not perfect and some of the sample transitions are jarring. On the other hand it's probably one of the best drum tracks I've ever made. That alone got it on here (you'll have to get past the first half to really hear the whole drum section running)

Download

For the quiet sections of iO I needed a calm track. Something ambient that didn't get annoying after the fourth or fifth time round. This turned out to be a pretty tricky task.

This track is basically as close as I got to what I needed. It's ambient, it doesn't really go anywhere and it's almost impossible to spot when it's looped. It's alright but it's not as good as the Hectic track I made for. So, if I get a chance (and I go back to iO) I might yet replace it.

Download

Outsider is one of H.P.Lovecrafts many short stories. In many ways it's typical of his style. A running commentary (in the first person) of a mans journey through a series of carefully described 'indescribable' events that ultimately end badly for him. The horror. The horror!

I quite enjoyed making this track using a freely available reading of the short story as a base (and inspiration). It's worthy of note that this is one of the first tracks where almost the entire drum beat track was constructed a single beat at a time (rather than from sampled loops). This was mainly because I wanted something a little odd and couldn't find any examples of it. if it's not obvious, I'm pretty happy with this one, even after all these years.

Download

There are two main reasons I could never be a proper musical artist.

First of all I'm too fickle and whimsical to stick to a single style. Someone listening to one track might decide it's something they like only to find every other track I've produced to be nothing like it.

Second, and more importantly, there's no way I could argue that what I do now for my own amusment is anything like actual music creation. I can't play a real instrument (aside from a bit of drumming and I'm not really sure that counts) I can't read or write music and I have no knowledge of music theory

but hey, it never stopped punk rock

Download

This was one of those nice tracks that just fell together easily, all the components came to hand as I searched and the places I put them just sort of worked first time. It's a great shame that these days such occasions are very rare.

I'm beginning to think that the time really has come to give up on the manipulation of samples and learn to use a synth and some proper music skills. like it's that easy

Download