What's next......

Musically speaking, now that "Loom of Light" has been released, I can focus on two projects that have been on the back-burner for a few months.

The first is a collaboration, of which I'm not really going to go into detail at this stage, but suffice to say it might prove to be quite interesting.

The second project is my next album under my own name, and it has the working title of "The Splendour Cascade".

"The Splendour Cascade" will be made up of songs and pieces of music I wrote in the mid-late 1980's, during what was a very interesting, but inspirational time in my life - more of that another time as it will provide something of a backdrop story to the album. I started work on this project quite a few years ago and some of the material collected at that time found their way onto other releases of mine under the Geigertek moniker - for reference, the "Endless Night" E.P. released through AD Music in 2010.

This album is gong to take some time to do as there are quite a few tracks and I have a day job, so I really don't anticipate anything seeing the light of day until at least this time next year. But, now that my little GTK2 Studio is now fully up and running, the making of "The Splendour Cascade" will, from a production point of view, probably be the easiest of my albums to do thus far.

One of the first things I have had to do with "The Splendour Cascade" has been to collate the original recordings I did between 1986 and 1989, that were done on a Fostex X-15 multi-track cassette tape recorder. Not so long back, I sourced myself another X-15 from evilBay as my old one went to the way of the "sold it when I got married" scenario. Listening to these old recordings brought back a lot of memories of a time that was something of a turning point in my life, I was also cringing at the awfulness of the recordings and my singing was quite dreadful!!! Thankfully, the utterly brilliant Ozone 8 mastering plugin from iZotope Inc. proved very useful in sorting out many of the out of control frequencies that littered the tracks. Might be fun to include some of these old recordings as bonus tracks when the album is eventually released. We'll see.

And of course, I now need to learn how to play everything all over again, thirty-odd years on!!! Love a challenge.

As well as the nostalgia element of listening through the cassette tapes, I was surprised by the amount of stuff I had done that I had completely forgotten about, and I have to tell you that there is at least one piece of music that has really captured my imagination and I am looking forward very much to doing it with everything that I have at my disposal now.

The journey starts here.

"Loom of Light"

And so it's out there, making it's own way in the world.

Sales have been interestingly more than expected as this little album is a little left-field in places, but hey, no complaints. And no complaints from the people who have both bought and listened to it via the Bandcamp streaming service.

Encouraging.

So, here is the link to it:

https://neilfellowes.bandcamp.com/album/loom-of-light

And here's the album cover again 😀

New album on the horizon - "Loom of Light"

The two main things in my life, aside from my loved ones, are music and photography, and it's the former of these that is of interest for this posting.

On the 1st June 2018, I will be releasing my third "solo" album, called "Loom of Light", as a download on my Bandcamp page.

Here's the cover:

Over the past couple of years, I have been putting together a small computer-based studio in my home, month by month filling the hard drive with the very best software I could get my hands on - hardware is not an option for me as I literally have no room in my little room (it's 6'x9'!!!). And in with that comes the fact that you need to learn how to use the things you buy. In time, my "ideas and learning" folder accrued quite a large number of musical sketches and phrases that came about as a result of my trying out new software and new techniques that I have picked up along the way.

And weirdly, that's how "Loom of Light" came into being.

Several of the pieces had a similar feel to them, largely because of my getting to grips with software-based modular synthesis, thanks to Softube's Modular and VCV Rack. I've also enjoyed learning about additive synthesis courtesy of Air Music Technology's Loom II and Arturia's Synclavier V synthesizers, hugely digital but very capable of providing some wonderful spectral washes of sound. 

So I layered, I arranged and I mixed numerous passages of music and sounds to create a highly experimental ambient album of electronic music. It won't be easy listening, apart from one or two tracks that have some element of melody to them, structure and form do not really play a part, it's random, it's sometimes noisy and in places, it can be quite jarring to the ear. Deliberate distortions and repetition are the order of the day, "Loom of Light" is about atmosphere, mood, ambience and a sense of, well, I'm actually really pleased with it.

Release will be download/streaming only through my Bandcamp page - a physical product simply isn't going to happen as it's too much of a financial hit.

All change, out with the old and in with the new......

If you've been here before, you may be wondering where everything has gone.

No need to wonder any more.

Everything has gone.

I took a long hard look at this bloggy thing of mine, along with my actual presence and participation in social media as a whole, and I came to realise that it wasn't working for me. It wasn't doing what I wanted it to do. It wasn't helping me to make music. It wasn't helping me to take photographs. It wasn't helping me to "see what's out there" in the wider world.

In this modern world, I've taken a huge step by moving myself away from the detritus-filled pit of Facebook and Twitter. I've moved away from LinkedIn and deleted everything that was on this blog page from the last ten years.

I found that life, and more importantly, my head was filled with unnecessary clutter and chatter and fragments of people's lives that really had no meaning or importance in the greater scheme of things on my journey through life. I found the negativity of Facebook and Twitter had become utterly draining on so many levels, and to the point whereupon a half hour wading through a muddied landscape of zombie fodder, desperately trying to find the good stuff that was both interesting and relevant, was leaving me feeling a tad despondent, angry, annoyed irritated and sometimes unhappy. The stupidity of people and their endless tirades about things that really aren't that important, over which they have some measure of control, but choose instead to take to the keyboard instead of taking action. The tiresome complaints and miserable bleatings of souls, unhappy and out of sorts with their lot, seeking solace in the darkest void where nothing but empty pity and false empathy dwells. And the basic nastiness of those sad, spiteful and pitiful two-faced individuals who choose to use people's social media postings as a weapon to further their own standing, when in actual fact they only serve to deepen the distrust and dislike from those around them.

Negative things (people and situations alike) are like a cancer that eat away at your soul and they need to be cut out. Act, not react. Do, not don't And this is the approach/moves I've been making over these last couple of weeks, and already, it's like a weight that's lifted, a grey cloud that's dissipated in the sunshine, the warmth of summer chasing away the coldness of Winter.

Heavy stuff.

And that's kind of it for the heavy stuff.

The world, and life itself, are simply full of possibilities, so this is what the pathway ahead of me will be all about, doing the Captain Kirk thing and seeking out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no ma......oh hang on, sorry......got a bit carried away there. But, you get the drift.

Music, photography, adventures and nonsense.

I make music, I take photos and I enjoy little adventures, both in my little GTK2 Studio and out in the wider world. I love movies, I love science fiction, I love spy stuff. I love food (though these days the food doesn't love me quite as much!!!) and I love meeting up with people from all walks of life. And talking of life, I don't lead an ordinary life, I don't fit into the worlds of routine and normality. Never have, still don't and never will. I live life one day at a time. Planning isn't something I do, it isn't something I'm particularly good at and it's certainly something I don't like. Planning and routine are for other people, they are welcome to it. In short, at the time of writing this, I'm 52 and a half years old and I haven't grown up. And you know what? I never will.

That's more like it ;-)