Blain, Clare and I have been friends for ages. Both of them are really interesting people and quite talented. Blain has had a scholarly interest in Arthurian legend--specifically Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur--ever since I've known him, and he's done storytelling gigs all over, at the Hillside Music Festival, the Omega Institute in New York state, and many other places. Over the period of a couple of months, we gradually hatched the idea to do a tape of Blain telling a few of the lesser-known stories from Le Morte d'Arthur. Initially at least, we really didn't know what direction it would take, other than it would be Blain and Clare doing the narration and dialog, and Blain playing some original compositions on guitar. We sat down in my living room (a rather more comfortable setting than the studio) and recorded about five hours of raw material, then carted it into the studio, laid it down on the multitrack and began overdubbing sound effects, eerie synth pads, and playing around with audio processing. As sometimes happens with projects, it kind of took on a life of its own, and the whole became greater than the sum of its parts, so to speak. I have no idea why, but for some reason everything seemed to just "click"... things fell into place almost magically: sound effects worked out just right, the music fit perfectly with the narration, even the post-production processing often turned up results that were way better than what I was hoping for. It was very cool. You can listen to a few selections from The Lady of the Lake on the Music page.

The Lady of the Lake was originally recorded and mastered on analog equipment and released as a cassette (CDs weren't all that affordable back then) but has since been digitally remastered and will probably be re-released on CD in the near future. Contact Northwind Sound (click the "Contact" button below) for more information.