I have been working on a new album recently. For a few months there I didn’t write any music at all which is hard on a person like me as I feel the need to make something every day. If I don’t make something then I feel unbalanced and incomplete. I was recording my record collection to mp3 instead – a huge task.
I had a couple of pieces that fell out (like afterbirth LOL) after Berlin that I was sure were destined for the floor. I had them lying on the computer desktop and would listen every few weeks. Yep, bin bait. Till suddenly one week I thought they were good! I left it a few more weeks and listens to be sure and yep, keepers. Funny how that works.
I got to the point where I couldn’t just record records any more I had to compose too. I split some days between the two and started to output. Initially I had a few ides for concepts. Here’s pretty well how it has all come together:
- A Forest – I found a picture my mother drew of some trees on the internet and it seemed to me there was a concept with a cover already made. Trees wouldn’t happen for me.
- A Stone – a big, oversize pebble kind of a thing. Sitting in a forest and being all mysterious. What a silly idea.
- Standing Stones – Stonehenge etc. I’ve been on the edges of that before but not done an album. No traction here either.
- I then decided to make a piece approximating the technology and methods I used for my first Column 3-57 album in 1995. Out came a piece I called Campaigns in a few hours. I thought that was fun why not do another based on a piece from Gods. Flop, another piece in a jiffy. Simple but fun. No real concept yet but on a roll.
- Driving to dinner one evening my lady pointed out the orange glow of the sun setting over the hills. That was a great look. I filed it as something important. A tine event but…
- At work and it suddenly dawned on me I was working to a concept already. I was digging back into my musical past and bringing things forward into my present (and future I guess). It also dawned on me that in a few months I would have been making music for 25 years.
- There it was, a concept: a quarter of a century of music making (geez, am I that old?).
Initially I did think compilation but after about 12 seconds I realized I had tapped that vein in 2010 with my Samplers. I had to do something new for my Century’s Quarter and I was already doing it in writing pieces that harked back over my career whilst being completely new.
I saw a cover somewhere between The Beatles Number Ones and Mountain & The Lowlands (that orange sunset). Yet to make that cover but I made a quick mock up so I didn’t forget.
My direction is set and the album isn’t too far away with most of the tracks in the can.