the cacophony of light - bits (2005)

1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5.. 6.. 7.. 8..

b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 b6 b7 b8

...................13:08 ...................08:39 ...................05:12 ...................04:46 ...................23:33 ...................05:29 ...................02:16 ...................14:15

total time: 76:20

 

Not much to say about this - I wrote and recorded it in 2004 and it's 100% electronic with a mild Vangelis influence (I think I may have chanced upon a Vangelis-like synth patch and just played around with it). That's about it really - I'd forgotten I made it and by chance I was listening to it last week and quite enjoyed it (in as much as you can enjoy your own music). I haven't a clue what the artwork is about - it was just a rendered 3D iamge I made using PovRay.

 

download: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=URPAR9HB

 

 

The Gaia Cacophony is a monster - it is a suite of three one hour pieces that meander from avant garde to symphonic and all ports in between - at the time of writing it I called it a a neo-symphony of electronica, but that sounded pretentious so I called it a cacophony instead, and that sounded even more pretentious, but this isn't commercial Pop, it's supposed to be like that.

 

The three tracks went through several changes and developments as the ideas that formed the concept and the musical themes slowly jelled into a semi-coherent whole, The original intention was to depict The Gaia Hypothesis as a garden (eg Eden or Elysium) where the symbiosis of all five of the biological kingdoms with the primeval elements (air, soil, water and wind) forms a self-contained bio-system, this was then expanded to include the development and evolution of life on Earth as part of that system. Contrary to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, this system becomes more ordered and less chaotic as time progresses, although ultimately, as fuel (ie the Sun) is consumed it will succumb to the 2nd Law, so the "music" becomes more complex and at the same time more ordered.

 

 

 

 

Dawn is primordial soup, it is the Gaia's creation, a statue gazing over a shapeless void. It is a musical image of a sunrise, the rays breaking out of the horizon and spreading across the Earth, warming and nurturing as it grows.

 

 

CD2 - Evolve

 

 

Evolve is growing, it is Gaia's development, growth and blossoming, and it is the evolution of life from primative forms into more comlex organisms, still reliant on those simpler forms for existance.

 

 

 

 

Forever is infinity- it is Gaia continuation, and abundance of noise and colour where cycles of simple to complex are interleaved within themselves.

 

 

 

The Gaia Cacophony was composed and recorded in the spring of 2003 in my conservatory, (a glass room bolted onto the side of my house - not a place of acedemic musical learning), and in my garden using a combination of Reason, live instruments and found-sounds. The bird-song you can hear in the music was recorded "live" as it were as were other natural sounds. Piano and  guitar feature heavily in the pieces, however the prime instrument is a replica of Alvin Lucier's Long Thin Wire which was was used through-out the recording process as a instrument, as a means of recording the sounds of nature and as an effects unit (like a 30m long spring-line reverb).

 

Oberheim OB12 Synth

Kramer Striker 244 guitar

Hewlett-Packard 3325A function generator

TASCAM 788 DAW portastudio

 

 

 

 

Disc 1 - Dawn : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=M8TQF8E1

Disc 2 - Evolve : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=X5S051MH

Disc 3 - Forever : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EJLIMI87