1999 – album as Column 3-57
I started this project with the idea of it being a covers album. Of course part way into Icehouse’s “Trojan Blue” I had to admit that not only was I not quite the musician I needed to be, but my 1 semitone vocal range wasn’t going to do justice to anyone. That song turned into “Sailing Catamarans On Blue Water” and the idea of a symphony started to brew.
I had listened to some Tchaikovsky and was taken with how influential he appeared to have been for several of the early electronic musicians. The styles were too similar to ignore. My symphony clearly wasn’t that but the album ends with a group of pieces called the Transport Suite.
Transport Suite – Air broke some new ground for me. The rolling feel and syncopation were things I had never managed before. I ws so porud of the record overall but… sadly some negative feedback from family taken to heart started the rot that turned into the rot I put out through the mid-’00s.
In many ways, this is the last real Column 3-57 album and was my first to go straight to CD.