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Dean

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Posted: December 19 2012 at 05:21

Yes, I deliberately don't capitalise the band name, or some album titles and some track titles. You are free to do whatever you like.

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Snow Dog

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Posted: December 19 2012 at 05:31

Dean wrote:

Yes, I deliberately don't capitalise the band name, or some album titles and some track titles. You are free to do whatever you like.

Not sure I'm comfortable putting my stamp on it. What a dilemma. Confused

Dean

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Posted: February 07 2013 at 10:55

Humdrum 2004

It's called Humdrum. I guess it's about the first week back after a summer vacation in Tuscany in 2004, because that's when I wrote the music - other than that - it's just music. I can't remember anything about the tunes or how they were composed/structured/written - the only notes I can find say: "Had an irritating piano refrain wandering around my head all day, so felt naturally compelled to construct some kind of tune around it. Except it was so irritating I had to bury it beneath layers of analogue-y synth swoops and whooshes - that'll teach those three notes not to mess with me again!". As always, the track titles are as helpful as British Rail platform announcer.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

that's weird
humdrum
contemporary amnesia
(like a) dandelion seed in the wind
the cosmic innumerator
pop tarts

16:48
9:59
3:37
11:22
8:52
2:15

total playing time: 52:54 minutes

The background skyscape photograph for the cover was taken through the aircraft window during the flight home, other pictures used were taken in Tuscany and Rome.

At the moment this is only available from Amazon.com for a mere $9.99 [direct link]

A download will be made available eventually, probably.

ps: this was album number 28.

Edited by Dean - February 07 2013 at 10:56

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Snow Dog

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Posted: February 20 2013 at 07:58

I really like your music , Dean. It is the sort of thing i am aiming for. But as a no talent hack it is more difficult for me. Plus I need a cool project name.

Dean

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Posted: February 20 2013 at 12:56

Thanks Ian, I am genuinely pleased you like it.

I'm also a no talent hack, but I believe that all things are do-able until proven otherwise and from what I've heard of your music you know how to put a tune together and you know what sounds right to you - the rest is just playing with ideas and making it up as you go along.

Picking a name is not something I'd want to sit down and try and consciously come up with.

My project name was kicking around for five years looking for a home and it wasn't originally the name of a music project (I always thought my "band" would be called The Olde Oak Trio and may still be if I ever put together a real band, I actually thought using that for a one-man music project was a bit of a waste of a damn fine name). In 1994/5 I created the silence of darqness as a semi-serious gothic ezine website and the cacophony of light was simply the antitheses of that. Originally it was intended to be the name of a sister-website and home for an interactive enovel but as the enovel became Darqlands it was apparent that the cacophony of light was an inappropriate name for the sister site. When I started making little music CDs for my own amusement in 2000 I resurrected the name and by sheer happenstance it sort of seem to be very apt name for what I was trying to do. For the next six years the cacophony of light vacillated between personal amusement and serious intent as I tried to convince myself I could perhaps get some people to listen to what I was creating. Anyway, to go full circle, after I stopped producing CDs of music the the cacophony of light MySpace page was used to write and publish an episodic enovel that eventually became my second print novel A Leaf In Freefall.

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Snow Dog

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Posted: February 20 2013 at 13:38

^Thanks for those kind words about the tracks I created. I'm sure there's a cool name out there where for me. I thought "Snow" or "Snow Dog" at first but I have completely gone off the idea. Someone already had "Snow" anyway.....

Dean

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Posted: March 21 2013 at 20:24

Harmony

Being an engineer with a love of mathematics I've always been fascinated by the mathematics of sound, and more specifically, the mathematics of music. Many of the albums I produced had mathematical themes, some were even composed based upon some mathematical sequence or progression, and all involved mathematics either consciously, subconsciously or simply accidentally. But there is more to it than that. Everything about music can be analysed and described mathematically: the number of beats in a time signature, note durations, tempo, the pitch of a note, the shape of a note, the colour of a sound, the relationship between octaves, the 12 tones in the chromatic scale, the 8 notes in a major scale, the 5 notes in a pentatonic scale, the 3 notes in a triad, the n notes in a chord, the chords in a progression, modulation and key changes, passing notes, transposing. And it all comes down to one thing - harmony - and harmony is the power of 2.

In a recent thread I posted an explanation of why the infamous (from a Prog perspective) three-chord trick worked and features so often in popular music. In that post I stated that "A major chord is created by taking the first, third and fifth note of that scale and playing them together" without offering an explanation of why those three notes on that particular interval (1,3,5) worked, and again that is down to one thing - harmony.

When I was making these albums I released them into the world from a website where I also wrote some background information on the music "theory" and home-made instruments that I used. In one of those articles I covered the harmonic relationship of a chord:

When two tones are played together they combine to produce two new notes, these can be expressed by a standard trigonometric identity that we all learnt in school (but have since long forgotten)
sin(A) + sin (B) = 2(sin((A+B)/2) x cos((A-B)/2))
Which means that the new notes are effectively (A+B)/2 - or the average of the two original notes and (A-B)/2, which is half the difference between them. The average is something we can generally hear, since it will be a note half way between the two - the difference is much lower in pitch, often below the range of human hearing, and is called the beat. Both these new notes affect the sound we hear.
This is the principle behind tuning an instrument against a test tone: in the above equation A is the required pitch and B is the current tuning, the idea is to make B equal to A and in doing that (A+B)/2 also becomes (A+A)/2, which is equal to A, and the beat-note (A-B)/2 disappears.
However when the two fundamental notes A and B are real notes the average and beat notes need to be related to these fundamental notes in someway for them to be harmonic.
For example, if we play C and E (i.e. first 2 notes of the Cmaj chord) then the sound will be a combination of C and E … (C+E)/2 and (C-E)/2. E expressed as a fraction of C is 5/4^th (i.e. is the 5th harmonic^[1]), so the resulting average note will be (1+5/4)/2 which equals (9/4)/2, which finally reduces to 9/8^th of C, (which incidentally is a D, but that's not important) and the difference note will be 1/8^th of C (which is a C three octaves down).

The key thing about all these notes is that the divisor of their fractions is a power of 2. Powers of 2 in music represent Octaves, which means that all of the notes are harmonics of C and therefore the new (average) note will be a 9^th harmonic of C.

Playing G (which is 3/2^nd of C and the 3^rd note of Cmaj) with the C, gives us two new notes that are 7/4^th and 1/4^th of C, which are also harmonics of C. Similarly, adding E and G gives and average note of 11/8^th of C and 1/8^th of C for the beat.
So, all three notes in the Cmaj chord are harmonic in the key of C because all the average and beat notes produced are harmonics of C.
Now on the other hand, if we repeat this with C and F (which is 4/3^rd of C) we get 7/6^th of C and 1/6^th of C, which are not harmonic in the key of C (because 6 is not a power of 2). However, if you flip this around, they do become harmonic in the key of F, such that C is a 3^rdharmonic of F (i.e. C is 3/2^nd of F) and the new average note will be 5/4^th of F or a 5^th harmonic of F.
Therefore to construct a major triad from a scale, you just pick the root note and the 3rd and 5th harmonic of that note.

^[1] E = 5/4th of C means that the frequency of the note 'E' is 1.25 times the frequency of 'C' - it is a 5th harmonic of C because if you multiply it by 4 (which transposes it up 2 octaves) it becomes exactly 5 times 'C', which is the fifth harmonic

In other words, if all the tones that go to make up a sound are harmonically related then any interaction between them will also be harmonic.

And of course it doesn't end there - the musical instruments themselves are governed by harmony: the reason why a oboe sounds different to a clarinet is because of harmonic content of the sounds they produce; the reason why a Les Paul sounds different to a Strat is because of harmonic resonance of the guitar bodies; the reason why a valve amp sounds different to a solid state amp is because of harmonic distortion in the circuitry and the reason why effects pedals change the sound of a note is due to harmonics.

Edited by Dean - March 22 2013 at 05:08

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Dean

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Posted: March 22 2013 at 10:20

Experimental Music

I have been known to use the word "experimental" when describing the music I made, but often added the proviso that I wanted it to sound "normal" - since those early days I've become more embarrassed by my use of the word and inwardly cringe when I see it attributed to music that merely diverges from the norms of accepted music composed to standard rules and formats. In the 21st Century we do have to question what is experimental music, especially in the realms of avant garde and electronic music where anything that can be done to stretch the conventions of music has probably been attempted by someone at sometime in recent musical history - to the extreme where even random has become commonplace. In my compositions I use the word to describe experiments made using music, such as using a Shepard tone within a tune, or by using modal scales to modulate between keys.

Modal Scales

I use Modal Scales a lot in my music, (erm... everyone does), and again, it's a mathematical thing that attracts me to using them. The modal scales are the 8 musical scales that you can produce using the white notes on a piano. If you start at "C" and play each white note in turn to the next "C" you have played a modal scale. This is what is called a Major scale and is given the mode name of the Ionian mode.

The notes on a piano are separated by semitones (also called half-tones, sometimes you will see this represented as W and h for Whole and Half tones, but I prefer to use T and S for Tone and Semitone) - "C" to "C#" is a semitone (S), "C#" to "D" is another semitone step, so from "C" to "D" is a whole tone step (T). From this we can see that the major (Ionian) scale has the sequence T-T-S-T-T-T-S. Now if we want to transpose this scale to another key, we start with the 1st note of the key and apply the same T-T-S-T-T-T-S step interval, and in doing that we have to use some of the black notes to maintain the intervals, so for example, A-major becomes A,B,C#,D,E,F#,G#,A [A to B is a whole tone (T), B to C# is a whole tone, C# to D is semi-tone (S)

If, on the other-hand, we'd just started at A and just played the white notes (A,B,C,D,E,F,G,A) the step intervals would be T-S-T-T-S-T-T - this is called the minor scale and is given the modal name of Aeolian mode - and again we can transpose this scale into another key by applying the same T-S-T-T-S-T-T from the new starting note.

These are the two scales commonly used in popular music, so common that we refer to them as Major and Minor rather than by their mode name of Ionian and Aeolian, but logically we can create a mode by starting from other notes and playing only the white keys and these too are given modal names: D:Dorian, E:Phrygian, F:Lydian, G:Mixolydian and B:Locrian and have their own step-intervals associated with them that we can use to transpose those scales into another key.

wikipedia wrote:

Mode Tonic relative
to major scale Interval sequence Example

Ionian I T-T-s-T-T-T-s C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C

Dorian II T-s-T-T-T-s-T D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D

Phrygian III s-T-T-T-s-T-T E-F-G-A-B-C-D-E

Lydian IV T-T-T-s-T-T-s F-G-A-B-C-D-E-F

Mixolydian V T-T-s-T-T-s-T G-A-B-C-D-E-F-G

Aeolian VI T-s-T-T-s-T-T A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A

Locrian VII s-T-T-s-T-T-T B-C-D-E-F-G-A-B

[note: you will see from this the pattern of Ts and Ss is the same for each, just shifted along one place each time]

Because these step intervals are different for each mode they sound different - the minor scale sounds different to the major scale because of the three sharpened notes - and these differences are often attributed with emotions like happy and sad.

You can use these modes "out of the box" in their basic form, and a lot of music does that, but you can alter these scales further by sharpening or flattening individual notes to make them more interesting, this is called augmenting and one I use occasionally is the Lydian Augmented which sharpens the 5th note in the scale to create a new sequence - Danny Elfman uses the Lydian Augmented in the Simpson's theme tune- the normally bright nature of the Lydian fitting well with a pastiche 1960s "sit-com" theme tune but given an unnerving edge by the sharpened 5th note.

We can in theory pick any 7 notes from the 12 available in an octave to produce an 8-note musical scale, the mathematical combinations available to us are 462 different musical scales and by augmentation we can derive a many of those from the 8 modal scales - how usable they are depends upon the harmonic relationships that can be formed by combinations of notes (ie chords) within those scales. The modal scales above are simply the melodic versions of these scales. Often these "weird" scales appear in a piece of music by accident as the music modulates from one key to another, other times they are used by design - if you see a "#" appear on a note in a piece of sheet music that could indicate an augmentation to the current scale (or it could just be a key-change).

So, what happens when we only play the Black keys on the piano. You will notice that there are five of them in an octave (C#,D#,F#,G#,A#), and these give rise to scales composed of five notes which can be called Pentatonic. From the keyboard diagram above you will notice that we have a new step-interval from C# to D# that is neither a semitone nor a tone but the addition of the two, which is known as a tritone (three semitones), you will also note that pentatonic scales constructed from black-notes do not contain any semitones. Other pentatonic scales do contain semitones, and some are constructed purely from tone intervals, those that contain no semitones and no tritones are a specific case called anhemitonic and are special because the lack of semitone and tritone intervals means that any combination of notes will always be harmonic - this means you can compose a "solo" in that scale that will sound harmonious no matter what order you play them - anhemitonic pentatonic scales can be made just by picking the five "T" intervals from the scale you are playing in.

Soooo... what makes any of that experimental (in the sense I use it here) - well, basically, nothing does - all these modes and scales are well known and used a lot in music, even in popular music - their use alone would not render a piece of music as being "experimental" - experimentation comes into effect when we start playing around with these in different ways.

Edited by Dean - March 22 2013 at 10:30

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Dean

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Posted: March 23 2013 at 17:33

wake - 2002

First a bit of history.

Back in the late 70s I read an article about The Long Thin Wire installation by Alvin Lucier - intrigued by this I constructed my own version in my parents back yard, stringing a length of steel wire between the posts of my mum's washing line, hooking up a pair of magnets from an old TV set and connecting it all up to a crude homemade analogue synthesiser controlled by an equally crude and homemade analogue sequencer driving into a homemade amplifier, using a cheap Phillips portable cassette recorder I proceeded to record 90 minutes of ambient music direct to C90 tape (which I then gave to a friend of mine and haven't see or heard since). Fast-forward 20 years or so to 2002 and I found myself to be the manager of a rock band who wanted to record some demos, so I bought myself a DAW and set about mastering the digital technicalities of that machine before committing their music to CD. Remembering the long thin wire experiment from 20 years earlier I made another version of it and set it up in my attic, running the length of steel wire from the roof of my house down to the shed at the bottom of the garden. The resulting recording was the track "wake". Inspired by this I recorded some more conventional tracks in various styles which finally ended up being an album's worth of music that became the debut release of the cacophony of light. The rest, as they say, is history, and so it was.

Back then there was no broadband, no bandcamp, no createspace, the only option was burn CDRs and sell them by mail from a website, and this is how I released the album to the world in 2002:

from the original col website wrote:

i could be deep and mysterious about the wake.
i could equally be shallow and commercial.
i choose to be neither, but probably end up being both.

wake is a cd of experimental music constructed and programmed by the cacophony of light.

how experimental?

well, it's not terribly arty, or musically particularly clever. it contains things like rhythm and melody, but not restricted to recognisable structures or produced with any regard to tune or tuning. some notes were simply put where i felt they needed to be, some were taken from nature and others derived by mathematical processes. there are elements of classical, minimalist, metal, jazz, ambient, 80's electro-pop, gothic/ethereal, prog-rock and even a bit of anthemic black metal thrown in for good measure. my intention, if there ever was one, was to make experimental music that sounds normal and not as dissonant as you would imagine anything with the epithet experimental to be...

if you prefer music not to be slotted into a convenient genres and are not phased by tracks of atonality and naivety mixed with random blips, squeaks and noises, then give it a listen. it is available at (genuine) cost price. it will neither make me rich nor famous, but that was never the intention. in all honesty, all i want is for people to hear the wake. if they do and like it, then all the better.

why 'wake', do i have a morbid fascination with death?

partly. however, 'wake' has three meanings in the english language and only one of them is to do with death. wake is not funereal music. i do not intent to dwell on any deep meaning that may be locked within the music, since it is neither deep nor meaningful in reality. however i do feel the need to jot down some notes on the recordings that may be of interest...

·      the somnabulistic soliloquy dialogue on 'somniloquy' (track-009) is taken from the silence of darqness e-novel, darqlands. the particular passage in question is a dream-conversation between one of the seven main characters (philip mallow) and the wind that occurs outside the story-line. i actually sing on this track, and for that i can only appologise.

·      these recordings also feature two guest musicians, namely my daughter alex on flute ('arise', track-002) and david stanton of season's end on guitar ('aftermath', track-001 and 'backwash', track-005). i am very grateful for their time and contributions.

·      vigil (track-007) represents the passage of time through a single human life-span. i am a little concerned that this idea is so simple and obvious that it cannot possibly be original, however, until told otherwise, i know of no other piece of music that uses it. utilising a predictable 60-bpm, the three clocks represent the relentless passing of time, with the 'cello marking this passing from the perception of a human life (time passes more quickly the older you get). the chimes mark significant moments in that life-time as either consonant or dissonant chords that finally end in death on the stroke of 13 o'clock...

·      the theremin and the long-thin-wire are featured on the title track, 'wake' (track-012). this was recorded in the open-air, (well, the long-thin-wire is over 15 meters long), over three sessions one sunday afternoon in january, 2002. also appearing alongside several passing lorries, the church clock and an overflying light-aircraft there is a special (unexpected) guest appearance of several species of wild birds. these feathered creatures were drawn to the sound of the theremin and deemed it necessary to join in. at one point the genus corvidae (probably rooks, i do not know, i am not an expert on bird-song) became so raucous that recording had to be stopped until after sun-down when they had all gone to bed.

·      the cover art work was produced using photoshop, paintshop-pro and povray 3-d rendering software. the face is not me, but does look quite similar.

1 :	aftermath	06:11
2 :	arise	04:16
3 :	awaken	04:12
4 :	deathwatch	04:48
5 :	backwash	02:58
6 :	requiem	05:12
7 :	vigil	05:45
8 :	lament	03:24
9 :	somniloquy	04:26
10 :	eulogy	05:01
11 :	epitaph	05:36
12 :	wake	10:20
13 :	memorial	01:50
14 :	the penultimate battle triumphant as the immortal emperor entombed in the woods of the carpathean forest creates necrophobic mayhem at the gates of marduk's darkthrone and nevermore shall thorns rest on thorns i lay against borknagar’s green carnation until we see the anathema that is hecate enthroned with my dying bride at bal sagoth’s ancient ceremony and the infantile hordes are nested in their cradle of filth (part 1)	00:13

Total playing time 1 hour 4 minutes 12 seconds

Eleven years on and this afternoon I listened to wake for the first time in nearly as many years. It's not good and there is much I would change (knock-back the reverb that's for sure, and remove the programmed drums as much as possible). It was also recorded before I acquired the OB-12 synth so all the keyboards were recorded from midi into Reason but there are live instruments on the CD so it's not all bad and there were some good ideas that could have been developed more. There are some complete duds there too - I would sooner forget the first four tracks, and no doubt the album would be improved by their omission, but the idea of the first track of the first cacophony of light album being called 'aftermath' amuses me too much to remove it from the download, so the others can stay too. As mentioned above, I sing on 'somniloquy', I also use spoken-voice (albeit with effects) so if you ever wanted to know what my home-counties/estuary accent sounds like now's your chance to find out.

download: http://www.mediafire.com/?vf9f12a3qxl1gs5 119Mb, includes all artwork.

Edited by Dean - March 23 2013 at 17:34

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Dean

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Posted: March 25 2013 at 10:37

Download Updates

Dean wrote:

I've uploaded some of the CDs *lost* from MegaUpload to MediaFire (all have been updated to include full artwork):

SOD030CD - Carousel: http://www.mediafire.com/?739t7h383pdmyuv - 50Mb

SOD043CD - Ballet: http://www.mediafire.com/?0cqp2uvbdjmwwg2 - 81Mb, (includes set of sepia-tint postcards)

SOD026CD - Benign: http://www.mediafire.com/?4qx0git97xhud78 - 87Mb

SOD047CD - Indulge: http://www.mediafire.com/?6cc707mp9ocuajg - 105Mb

SOD048CD - Metamorph: http://www.mediafire.com/?r120kqr46ebw56c - 77Mb

SOD005CD - Moments: http://www.mediafire.com/?7dk9h1b18540ok8 - 91Mb

SOD009CD - Passing: http://www.mediafire.com/?n1zbe228020ld2c - 49Mb

SOD050CD - Pilgrim: http://www.mediafire.com/?tal7wsbus61ro8y - 61Mb

SOD034CD - Trillithon: http://www.mediafire.com/?95wkckncxyyk7i7 - 72Mb

enjoy (or not).

More files uploaded, again, all artwork included:

SOD040CD - Landscape: http://www.mediafire.com/?bdjw7jni4yk175y - 63Mb

SOD029CD - Untitled: http://www.mediafire.com/?3a01c9909j6u89o - 68Mb, (12-page booklet)

SOD028CD - Humdrum: http://www.mediafire.com/?a90cf99n3s222sz - 68Mb

SOD001CD - Wake: http://www.mediafire.com/?vf9f12a3qxl1gs5 - 119Mb

SOD002CD - spunos: http://www.mediafire.com/?31skx24p0xd1wl3 - 64Mb

SOD010CD - Antiquarian: http://www.mediafire.com/?d8jx4glqxtlqgmr - 60Mb, (includes a set of Penwith Monolith postcards)

SOD051CD - Stateless: http://www.mediafire.com/?ssnnxvsd6c59cz4 - 48Mb

I've also uploaded my three triple album box sets. If I am permitted to be proud of my own work, then I am proud of these and consider them to be some of my finest pieces and contain my best artwork to date (probably). If there was ever a true intention behind my composing, then these three albums stand as the epitomy of what I was attempting. I know a lot of people have downloaded Moments and seem to like it, but that was an early album and I believe I "got better" at composing music as I progressed, I also think my production skills improved considerably too. If you have only tried Moments (and liked it... or not) then please give one of these more ambitious projects a try, thanks.

SOD011CD - The Gaia Cacophony (part 1) Dawn: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?546dgslrb7a5iqx - 68Mb

SOD012CD - The Gaia Cacophony (part 2) Evolve: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?59ojhwm11en3tg5 - 67Mb

SOD013CD - The Gaia Cacophony (part 3) Forever: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?3om9xe3yarga3pw - 74Mb, includes all artwork for all three discs

SOD016CD - The Mathematica Cacophony (part 1) Geometric: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?tcz3eys3rameyw6 - 78Mb, includes all artwork for all three discs

SOD017CD - The Mathematica Cacophony (part 2) Derivative: http://www.mediafire.com/?gkglrzs6ekt0kgw - 77Mb

SOD018CD - The Mathematica Cacophony (part 3) Quantify: http://www.mediafire.com/?d47915qtcmx6v4s 107Mb, including bonus tracks

SOD036CD - The West Wind Cacophony (part 1) Xolotl: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?88cb7sep785109n - 60Mb

SOD037CD - The West Wind Cacophony (part 2) Yaponcha: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?sqboczd2dhvqk25 - 60Mb

SOD038CD - The West Wind Cacophony (part 3) Zephyrus: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?rus60awkm7rxlpy - 85Mb, includes all artwork for all three discs

Four more files uploaded with all necessary artwork:

SOD007CD - Aibohphobia: https://www.mediafire.com/?6at8145q59thy0k - 61mb

SOD019CD - Reflects: https://www.mediafire.com/?6at8145q59thy0k - 62Mb

SOD049CD - Oligarch: www.mediafire.com/?rl8l6kt9288h8yr - 61Mb

SOD052CD - Centaur: www.mediafire.com/?472ldpaulazjtuc - 51Mb

Edited by Dean - March 23 2015 at 07:22

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Dean

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Posted: March 25 2013 at 10:41

stateless - 2005

This was the 51st and last CD I recorded before pulling a veil over the cacophony of light project and was released to the world as a stream from LastFM.

Being the 51st album I had originally intended it to be a statement about the "special relationship" between the UK and the USA as the UK is sometimes jokingly called the 51st State, but my heart wasn't in it and the idea just didn't motivate me enough to produce any music on the subject. Then it occured to me that while politicians and diplomats argue such things, we as citizens play no part and since the advent of the internet and the world-wide-web we have become members of a greater community, a stateless population of a stateless nation each getting on with the other regardless of national boundaries, race or creed. The future, such as it is, is ours not theirs and so the album's title and the subsequent openning track, The 51st Stateless, was born.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.	The 51st Stateless A Toe Nail Poem Polymorphilla Go Go Gothic Gatling Gun! Intro Red	......... ......... ......... ......... .........	05:52 17:30 05:39 15:45 06:13
	all tunes © dean cracknell 2005

Total Playing Time : 51 minutes.

And just as the first CoL CD began with a track called 'aftermath', the last CoL CD ends with an introduction, 'Intro Red'.

download: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ssnnxvsd6c59cz4 48Mb, includes all artwork.

Edited by Dean - March 25 2013 at 11:14

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Snow Dog

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Posted: March 25 2013 at 10:48

Oh goody!

Dean

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Posted: March 25 2013 at 11:46

I began working on stateless in October of 2005 and had already produced the artwork for the album cover based upon a landscape where the city-scape in the distance was modelled on a sound-wave profile when Kate Bush released Aerial in November of that year utilising the self-same idea but with a sound-wave representing mountains:

A little miffed by that unfortunately timed co-incidence (and not for the first time, I had used a cover based on Newton's cradle before Dream Theatre) I quickly knocked out an alternative and changed the colouration away from the orange-brown to make it even more different to Kate's "copy":

But I wasn't happy because I rather liked the sunset/sepia tint, so changed it again to the current version.

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Posted: March 25 2013 at 11:53

Yes I like your original cover too. I see Kate's as islands rather than mountains though. Islands like that are usually just huge undersea mountains anyway. So mountains it is.

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Posted: February 08 2015 at 09:28

aibohphobia - 2003

This album was recorded in 2003 originally as two EPs (Aibohphobia and Truth) but was only ever released into the wild in this form with tracks from both interleaved. There is no earthly connection between the music other than it was produced within the same time-frame, which happened to coincide with a major house-move out of a small town where we'd lived in for many years into what we had assumed to be the relative peace and quiet of the country-side. This, it soon transpired, was a false assumption. Prior to this move, I had done all my recording in a converted attic of our small terraced house and aside from ceasing any acoustic recording while the nearby church clock chimed the quarter hour had never really been bothered by the need for sound-proofing. Now I discovered a cacophony of background rural noise to disturb each recording I endeavoured to make, and even more surprising an increased level of man-made aural polution that I was least expecting. To cope with this I took two approaches, the first being to make music by DI-ing instruments directly into the DAW, and the other being to live with these extraneous noises and incorporate them into each piece.

Erehwemos (4:48)
The Truth About Birds And Time (3:12)
Palindrome (4:29)
The Truth About Birds And Rain (7:37)
Define Symmetry (4:02)
The Truth About Birds And Traffic (9:02)
Palindrone (4:09)
The Truth About Birds And Planes (7:57)
Nowhere (4:48)

The "Truth about Birds and..." tracks are the result of using these found sounds as part of the music itself and the interleaved tracks are the result of playing wholly within the DAW environment. Because I had essentially unrestricted freedom to mess around with both the score and the audio tracks of those latter tracks themselves during the production process some of the resulting music is probably impossible to play live due to the degree of post-production that was used. These tracks were grouped together under the name Aibohphbia (the fear of palindromes) because each was a musical palindrome of one kind or other (inspired by Bach's Crab Canon) that would either sound the same when played backwards or performed backwards, however, the one thing I was keen to avoid here was music that sounded like it was being played backwards.

This ancient album can be downloaded (with all artwork) here: https://www.mediafire.com/?6at8145q59thy0k - 61Mb

ps: David Stanton of Season's End (and Dust'n'Bones) plays lovely Gilmouresque guitar on "The Truth About Birds And Traffic", for which I am truly grateful.

Edited by Dean - February 09 2015 at 05:21

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Posted: February 09 2015 at 05:07

Reflects - 2004

From my notes made at the time of recording:

14 March 2004

Found myself in a reflective mood over the weekend and wrote a tune that will probably be the start of the next Cacophony of Light release

28 March 2004

My 47th birthday rapidly approaches... In my mind I'm still in my early twenties - my body begs to differ. Ho Hum. Made the final adjustments to the next CD - it's called 'Reflects' and it reflects backwards on themes and styles that had tweaked my imagination over the years. I recorded a version of Marc Bolan's Hot Love for it, mainly because it's was the first pop-song that made me stop and listen - but for copyright reasons I cannot include it on the CD, but it's there on my personal copy. Ho Hum.

I'm now 57 and am reflecting back on the events of ten years ago... Ho Hum.

1 ... Escape Into Evening (18:26)
2 ... The Fallen (11:56)
3 ... Reflects/Reflex (13:52)
4 ... xxx xxxx (8:17)

Since the moment I finished it (or more probably while I was adding the finishing touches) "Escape Into Evening" has been one of my personal favourite pieces of my own music. I think it is because it captured the reflective mood I spoke of back in 2004 and paints an evening landscape in my head. Of all the pseudo-classical/electronica tracks I created this was the one I always imagined being performed by a real orchestra (at least an imaginary real orchestra) with a talented pianist who could take my simplistic piano melody and improvise something good with it... Ho Hum.

Download with full artwork: https://www.mediafire.com/?6at8145q59thy0k - 62mB

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Star_Song_Age_Less View Drop Down

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Posted: February 11 2015 at 23:56

Wow. I just started listening to Landscapes.

How did you manage to produce so much music? And did I understand right that this was all basically done in a three year period? This is amazing. Epic ambient, as you said.

Edit: Oh dear. I might have to stop because it's night, everyone else is asleep, and beltane is scaring me half to death. I need to listen to this one in the daylight, otherwise I think I'm in Silent Hill. (Speaking of which, this would make a phenomenal horror game soundtrack).

Edited by Star_Song_Age_Less - February 12 2015 at 00:07

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Posted: February 12 2015 at 03:39

Star_Song_Age_Less wrote:

Wow. I just started listening to Landscapes.

How did you manage to produce so much music? And did I understand right that this was all basically done in a three year period? This is amazing. Epic ambient, as you said.

Edit: Oh dear. I might have to stop because it's night, everyone else is asleep, and beltane is scaring me half to death. I need to listen to this one in the daylight, otherwise I think I'm in Silent Hill. (Speaking of which, this would make a phenomenal horror game soundtrack).

Gosh. Erm. Sorry. First my music gives Rob nightmares and now it's scary... I feared that an album that basically begins with 25 minutes of ambient noise would scare people off. LOL

If I recall correctly the "music" on that album doesn't start until about halfway through beltane, I think from then on it calms down a lot once "spring" blossoms into "summer". (well, a bit). Wink

You've picked a tough one as your first taste of the cacophony of light, others are much more musical and less ambient.

2004 was a productive year, 25 albums is roughly one every two weeks from the initial idea to the completed album and cover art. At the time, it didn't seem that excessive (though perhaps my wife would beg to differ) - I am a night owl so most of it was produced in the hours between 10pm and 2am so in a 14 day period that's 56 hours of noodling on the keyboard and PC.

I've never found writing/composing/constructing the kind of music I create to be particularly difficult. As I am prone to say, if you can hum, whistle or vocalise a tune then you can create melodies of your own invention easy enough. I think it is because I'm not a musician (if that doesn't sound too contradictory) so I can just put notes together and then play around with them, the instrumentation and the arrangement to construct the soundscape I'm aiming for. If it sounds right to me then I'm usually happy with it.

As I noted in the OP, a musician friend of mine often remarked that my music could be good if I spent more time on it (and to their credit, some of my friends were usually quick to defend me whenever he said it) - I'd just grin and bear his comments and carry on regardless. Long after I stopped making these albums I asked him what he meant and he replied "you know, make them into proper songs", meaning of course, standard verse-chorus arrangements.

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Posted: February 12 2015 at 21:56

Dean wrote:

Gosh. Erm. Sorry. First my music gives Rob nightmares and now it's scary... I feared that an album that basically begins with 25 minutes of ambient noise would scare people off. LOL

If I recall correctly the "music" on that album doesn't start until about halfway through beltane, I think from then on it calms down a lot once "spring" blossoms into "summer". (well, a bit). Wink

You've picked a tough one as your first taste of the cacophony of light, others are much more musical and less ambient.

Don't misunderstand me - scary is a complement. Emotionally effective! It was just a bad time for me to be experiencing the fear. I will be slowly digesting your music over the course of the next few months, I think. :) This is exactly why being on progarchives is so awesome, you get to hear all these things that otherwise wouldn't make it to your ears.

As far as making them into "proper" verse-chorus songs... no way. Some people cling to that mode so fiercely. It's there for a reason, it can be very effective and it's relatively easy for an average person to digest. They don't have to listen too hard to it to "get it." I myself write plenty of verse-chorus style songs. But to try and force all music to do that is like saying all poetry should be in limerick form. Prog... is like The Odyssey.

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Posted: February 12 2015 at 23:11

Dean wrote:

Gosh. Erm. Sorry. First my music gives Rob nightmares and now it's scary...

I still recall the dream and the experience. Although I've never given Carousel a go in the waking hours, so maybe a bit of daylight might help. Tongue

Edited by Epignosis - February 12 2015 at 23:13

https://epignosis.bandcamp.com/album/a-month-of-sundays