Interfaces are the shared boundaries between two environments. Some interfaces are quite small; others can be really large, such as swamps. Everything you hear is pure handmade synthesis.
No AI – No Samples – No Loops
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This is the only way that I make a return on what I do.
- Mountain & Sky – the immovable mountain meets the ever-moving sky with passing caresses and solid presence.
- Forest & Grass – The transition from forest to grass can be very sudden. Even if it is just a glade within a forest, there are trees, then there are none. The wind blows the leaves on the trees, and the creatures are alive.
- Concrete & Scrub – within busy cities there are places where the concrete isn’t, and wild things hold on, just as the wild try to keep their freedom within the concrete maze.
- Drain & Field – around my new home in South Australia, there are channels cut across the land to drain the fields for agriculture. These drains (like creeks) run clear & clean and have become noisy homes for frogs and birds.
- Ice & Ocean – sea ice always has liquid water as a neighbor. They are the same yet different – always swapping something of themselves with each other.
- Sand & Sea – the most well-known interface where life teems as the tides change and each creature gets its turn.
- Interfaces – the soundscapes created for each of the pieces above.
“Interfaces”: It starts slowly – a spacious room opens up – almost like a wellness song. You get the feeling that time is passing more slowly now – or that you are currently in a fantastic parallel universe. The sound changes only after five minutes – a new phase begins. At the 12-minute mark, “Forest and Grass” begins – featuring different timbres and a new feel. At around the 18-minute mark, we enter “Concrete + Scrub”: here, you can even hear a percussive groove and a bassline driving forward in eighth notes. “Drain + Field” is close to nature: I feel like I can hear the frogs and birds there.
Overall: A great, relaxing album. You can only truly grasp it if you take your time and immerse yourself in the journey. You are then rewarded with a “new world” and a wealth of ideas. Brilliantly done!
Enroe (on KVR)
If you enjoy my music, please support me by purchasing via my Bandcamp.
This is the only way that I make a return on what I do.
Tech Trivia
Everything you hear is pure synthesis in Reason 14. The soundscapes for each piece mostly use only one instrument – Europa, with a few Thor.
In the past, I generally kept Australian landscapes out of my work. I didn’t want to seem parochial. It struck me so often that those trading on their region were pandering to nationalism etc. This has changed a bit recently. Some of that I put down to having a much better understanding of the landscape of Australian stories. Living up north, the landscape didn’t really match the paintings and legends of the countryside, which are more centered in the south. Driving through a lot of this helped me to realize that much of Australia really is like those classic Federation-era paintings of gum trees and fields. They were (and still are) the reality of the painters and storytellers.
Another factor was probably some of the Chris Hammer books, where he manages to bring the land itself into the story as if it is a driving character. My first of his was “The Tilt”, where this unique feature dominates the space everything happens in. I haven’t felt that the TV shows do his books full justice. They feel parochial to me – trying too hard to seem too Aussie. “Mystery Road” felt a lot better in that way.
The Drains around Millicent were a really new thing for me. Drains are like little creeks crossing the land – but they are man-made. In this area, they were laid 1846-1883, so have become part of the environment that they work to change day and night. The Woakwine Cutting was one of the largest of such projects, cutting a one-kilometer trench through a mountain. This was done by one farmer with a couple of machines in 1957-1960.