Energy Failure on the Sibelius
Someone, I think it was DJ Spooky, described Brian Eno's "Apollo" and "On Land" as psychogeographic ambient, in that the music moved from simply being decorative and un-noticed (ie. Music for Airports), to an evocation of a real or imaginary landscape. I thought about what I was trying to convey in this piece, and realised that while it is also psychogeographic (it's aboard an imaginary spaceship, the Sibelius), it is also event based. Psychochronographic then? Twaddle. Anyway, the song and title attempt to capture what it would be like if the power driving the ship failed completely, and was left floating in perfect silence in deep space. The initial reaction would be surprise, and would transform to uncertainty and then I imagine, to dread. The feeling of uncertainty and inevitability mingled with the sense of wonder (of floating around in space) was something I tried to capture, especially with the Namlook inspired bass.
When I was around 10, I was the proud owner of a Commodore 64 computer, which I loved dearly. On it I had a game called Mutants. While the game was quite odd, and in retrospect, fairly forgettable, the music has stuck with me to this day. There was an inevitability in the music that just stayed with me, and I find myself improvising around it even now. It just became part of me. It's funny that some music from an old game that I've completely forgotten about should influence me so as an adult, but we often don't get to choose our influences. They pop up when we least expect them at times and can sometimes make fools out of us. I found out that the music from this game was composed by Fred Grey, and is considered a bit of a classic of game music. Another C-64 game called Delta, composed by Rob Hubbard also left a huge mark on me, with it's dark moody soundtrack, and it also came out in this piece. I think I'm opening up some old neural pathways with this piece.
Listen out for the creepy organ muzak playing on one of the deserted spaceship decks. I like the idea of this innocuous muzak that is still piped through the spaceship speakers long after everyone has died on board. Very B-grade sci-fi don't you think?
The Astrology
I was staying in a beachside resort with my wife and kids, and we had this phenomenal view of the ocean. I sat staring at it for a long, long time, while listening to ambient music on my mp3 player (I was on holiday!) and I imagined this old black ship appearing on the horizon, partly illuminated by the white light of the sun and the dull reflective metal colour of the ocean. I imagined that the ship was called The Astrologer. Somehow, this became The Astrology, probably because the Astrologer, when removed from the idea of a ship, sounds to much like a the traditional role of someone into astrology. Funnily, that Rob Hubbard/Peter Namlook bass line pops up again half-way through. The piano at the beginning was I guess, influenced by Global Communications, and mabye a bit of Harold Budd meets that Robin Guthrie chorusey guitar sound. After the piano intro, the whole piece just drifts off into drone land, starting on a rather unexpected note, and staying there until that note becames the new key. After that, the bass pops up again, and brings in a new theme. I used Absynth 4 for the big drones, which I love: they sound huge, and the bottom end is frighteningly good.
Sol
This is a very emotional piece. Probably the most melancholy ambient piece I've recorded, for some reason. I recorded this about 2 years ago, when I was mucking around with my old digital piano, wired up to my computer. I used Subtractor in Reason, which I don't normally really like, but the song just happened. It had a bit of a Jarre feel about it, and evoked an idea of someone travelling for a long time through space, and finally seeing the sun again after a long time away, and realising that It was just a big ball of fire, but still made them happy. There's something important in there, but I've forgotten what it was. I was quite happy with the little "Tierce de Picardie" at the end, where it goes all major and content. Usually I don't go for that much, unless it's done extremely well (Tchaikovsky comes to mind), by someone who isn't going to make it sound like cack.
The Barometric Sea
This is an ancient chinese star chart. I love the idea that back then, you might have thought there were vast oceans and forests up in the sky, and weren't limited to thinking about our limited ideas of what could be up there. The Barometric Sea is my idea of evoking a place that sounds like a body of water, but isn't. Like the Sea of Nectar on the moon. Standing on the shores of an empty sea. I love that idea. What the hell is wrong with me? Anyway, this is probably my favourite piece on the whole album. It was influenced by Vidna Obmana's Endless Mirage and Refined on Gentle Clouds but then comes out sounding, I think, unlike him. I was happy with the slow build, and gradual fall of the piece.
Influenced by Stephen Baxter's The Raft series, in which a tiny little 'raft' in the middle of space is the home on which the main characters live. The novel has a really kind of claustrophic feel. There are these trees which float in space, and they are used as rafts to get around between the tiny floating asteroids and pockets of floating rock. I imagined a hub, and then thought about what it would be like to leave, what was already only a tiny speck of land, into the absolute unknown. The deep drum-like sounds at the start attempts to capture the somber and serious moment of departure, and the act of going into nothingness. It's a bit cinematic, this piece.
My brother Boris, who is a visual artist, once did a series of photographs in which he featured abandoned sites, such as old houses and factories. I was struck by the atmosphere of these photos. Old rusted bits of corrugated metal, trees growing out of walls, flowers and graffiti covered walls. I don't know if you've ever gone for a drive through some of the more industrial parts of your town, but I know that these areas hold a lot of ambient magic for me. Apart from being environmentally dubious, I do love their austere and deserted feel. They feel creepy, but beautiful, in a 'wouldn't want to be there, but love looking at them' way. No one lives in a deserted factory, people worked in them at one point, but then they all left, leaving them eeirily empty. The piano attempts to capture that empty, at night feeling. When I was a kid, I could see the a massive industrial site from our backyard, and my father used to work there. In the evening, with empty woodlands all around, The oil towers would light up, and flames pouring out of them would light up the lower part of the sky. I think the contrast of nature and industry gets me. Such a paradox. So ugly together, yet strangely beautiful.
This piece is at the heart of my desire to write ambient music. It's completely isolated. No-one around. In a beautiful, yet frighteningly desolate place. The drop represents the music, I think. In that you get a taste of a bit of nowhere when you hear it. Who knows. The above picture is of one of the landmarks on Mars. I've often imagined what it would be like to sit and watch a sunset from another planet. I think it's a vicarious fantasy- and I would probably baulk at the idea of being completely alone if it became a reality, but it gives me a nice feeling for some reason.
AMBIENT WRITINGS
Suspended halo-like underneath spinning breathless azure satellites,
whirring sound and blinking glass covet empty chrome-covered passageways,
Suspecting eye and heart-mother searching infinitude-less universes for faint beacon traces
of impossibly isolated moonlings, sharing empty sunset and glowing earth-hurtling spacewalk vistas
1: The faint hum of big forever
A millennium away, a leviathan endlessly levitates world and sunward. Vertically impossible cavernous and event null-particle treacle black-like scales threaten an empire-ceasing hushing breath beneath disintegrating sky, deafening imploded ears and minds with its galactitudeness and earth swallowing maelstroms, which breathe then explode in deathly bird-of-paradise shimmers. Violet champagne nebulas orbit and fade leaving a long wake restful and serene desert-like bleached wind watched by hovering sun and moon. A faint silent similar in a microscopic hint breathes in relief coloured hopes, and intercepts excerpts of the eye's beacon, hoping eternal and humble, clawing through never and lifetime-taking steps towards her. Hope stays and old is forgotten, droid extinguished and remade by sunbirth. Pestilent notes of leviathan descend in the dark blue forget of behind-ness and the honeysun of the centre of the galaxy. A sorrowing sun-shaded vessel falls upward and elevenward in the secret all-night of space, waiting hushed and expectation-less over the far-below rings, spinning motionless and vacuum silent.
2: The lonely blue crystal thought
Dark beacon of perfect goddess spherical beauty blackly resting in the hush of an isolated eyeless sky sea. Sailing beacon unmanned glides by and a lonely blue crystal thought scans and hopes waiting for the non-pause of completion, then extinction. Hum of crystalline eternal motor thrumming gently pushing onward and outward, inward and nowhere, sending click-clacks of once learned and important signals, now rusted shut deep and unimportant in the bowels of the large wilderness of time.
Guideless and remote, serene and unheard, the thought's faint work is finished and untold, black and covered, smooth and cylindrically perfect in the enfolding black night sun. Cherished million-day-away stars gleam crystal and white in the faintly drawn background as if watching, yet not existing or noticing, the large all-containing blue room silently dangling in the warm impossible vertitude years above. The thought remains a sentinel-like drop, a silent guardian high in the corner of the sky. Old, ancient, new and not yet born fuse like a far away laughing note into non-time, unchecked and wonderfully merging light and darkness into the faint hum of big forever.
3: Twisted nebula fire
Twisted nebula fire encircles time as lush prisoner, and caressing enfolding stares of vault in the sky splendor collide into heat sun chords on distant hazy planet surface. Far, far below looming shadowed light of solar midnight, falling into sinking jewelled stars journeys away and above inconsolable diamond sleeping planet, high singing strains of muted vertical polyphony enfold a small shrine of all isolation. The slender unfurling of light against tar black billowing sails fill with silent joy and ceremony into the black palatial plane, towering towards eastern regal solarity and structure not seen and heard for a thousand lives high over lonesome stretches of ill-speaking winds and snarling sands.
Unexplained riddle of maze waits for the arrival of figure and machine. The figure and thought of rusted and entombed solemn horror and black breath smell of sulphur, hating all soft and cream, stands shadowless under non-sentient gravity, twisted gnarled corridors lead nowhere and here, coating much thick tired slowed tangible night without life and with all forget.
mirkoruckels@iprimus.com.au
