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| Heavy Industry |
If I remember correctly, this likely started out as a commissioned track, for some sort of video project. It went through some permutations since then, and I can't remember whether it actually got used for anything or not. I do recall that its brevity is a response to a friend's comment one time that I tended to stretch ideas out unnecessarily, so this is my attempt to: get in, get it done, and get out. No specific idea where the title came from, perhaps something to do with the commission. My reaction on listening to this now (just prior to uploading it to the website) was: my GOD does this ever sound 80's!
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| No Heroes |
Another collaboration with my buddy Pete. This was recorded in his studio, which at the time had a totally awesome collection of analog synths that would probably be worth a small fortune today. Pete (a drummer by trade) programmed the drum tracks, which really make this tune, in my opinion. Oh, and a lot of it was recorded "live" (i.e. not sequenced) and a happy accident led to one of my favorite moments in the track: right around the 1:33 point in the tune we had to manually switch one of the synths to a different sound at just the right moment for the coda, and I think it momentarily overloaded the synth's teeny microprocessor brain. The result was this way-cool "backwards" swoosh sound that I love. Totally accidental, but trippy.
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| The Need for Speed |
Yep, another Pete/Chris joint venture (see comment below on "requiem"), this one done in my studio. We'd just gotten back from seeing the movie Top Gun (once upon a time, Pete and I were both hang-glider pilots, and continue to this day to be dedicated aviation enthusiasts.) We both were thinking, "Hell, we could do a better movie theme than that!" (referring to "Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins), and well, this is the result. It's a pretty minimalist track, in essence, and we had fun dubbing in the jet sounds, radio chatter, and that awesome sound-effect near the end of an actual F14 Tomcat landing on a carrier deck. I'm pretty pleased with the electric guitar fills during the fade-out. Pete kept me at it until I got it right.
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| A Legend in his Own Mind |
And another Pete/Chris joint effort, this one done in Pete's studio. The audio quality is pretty weird; to me it sounds heavily compressed, or something, but this is the only version I have. And again, the most interesting part of the tune was a fortuitous accident, which is why I decided to include it here. The second section, where the melody is being carried by a sound rather like pizzicato violin, was actually an accident. We intended to use a totally different sound, but when we heard this one, with that incredible slow downward filter sweep in behind the pizzicato sound, we loved it. We decided to use that same sound as the final chord at the very end and let the resonant filter sweep go right to completion, so you can hear the filter emphasizing each harmonic in turn as it moves slowly downward through the frequency spectrum. It's kind of cool.
The title came from a singer-songwriter friend of Pete's, who during a performance would sometimes introduce one of his own tunes thusly: "And now, folks, here's the song that made me a legend in my own mind..."
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| Prophet Margarine |
I think I did this as a kind of demo tune to prove (to myself?) that I could write something fairly innocuous and mainstream, in case I ever needed to pitch my abilities to some corporate suits. Not totally successful, since despite my best efforts to be innocuous and mainstream, a couple of weirdnesses did creep in. Hmm. Damn those drugs! Still, a friend of mine did comment, on hearing it, that it sounded very much like the soundtrack to some sort of corporate video about investments, so the title is an obvious pun on "profit margin." Yeah, you probably figured that out, huh? (Ditto on the previous "80's-sound" comment.)
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| No Axe to Grind |
So again, in the spirit of flogging a dead horse, I tried writing yet another tune that might perhaps appeal to some species of (relatively) mainstream person with money, who would be willing to part with some of it in exchange for, say, a film score. I drew a bit of inspiration for this track from Harold Faltermyer's composition Axel F, the theme for that 80's Eddy Murphy vehicle Beverly Hills Cop, going for that sparse, atmospheric, untouched-by-human-hands techy synth sound. It's an influence hinted at, I suppose, in the title, although I mostly named it "No Axe to Grind" in reference to the fact that this was - at the time - one of my few compositions not to feature guitar (or "axe" in musician-slang).
This entire tune was sequenced using an ancient Roland MSQ-700 sequencer, and I think the final synth solo kind of overloaded its brain - I do that a lot, apparently - so the timing is, unfortunately, a bit off. Pity. (Ditto, yet again, on the previous "80's-sound" comment.)
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| Sensemilla Street |
Yes, it's no accident that this track is included immediately after my abortive attempts to sound "mainstream" (above). Think of it as restoring the "balance". I happened to be watching Sesame Street one day over my morning coffee (at about 1 PM, probably) and there was this cool segment on the show about how steel drums are made. I was totally stoked by the sound they made, and immediately went into the studio to try and recreate it. This piece is the result.
The title is an obvious pun on Sesame Street, and referring also to "sensemilla" (a type of potent marijuana) as a reference both to the genre (coming from the Carribean, where a lot of sensemilla comes from) and to my state of mind while composing it. At the time I didn't have access to any actual latin percussion sounds, so a lot of the ones in the percussion break in the middle were created from scratch. This tune actually made it onto a vinyl compilation record released by Ed Video that year. They probably just liked the title.
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| Dreyam I |
This is actually where the name "Dreyam" originated, as it later applied to my loose-knit musical "collective", and the pseudonym under which I released a lot of material. It started as the working title for this tune. Occasional collaborator Paul Zuwala showed up at my studio one evening with his flute, and proceeded to play me this melody. I thought it was pretty cool, and immediately began improvising some textural synth pads and sound effects behind it. We both got pretty excited about how it all fit together and, after hastily putting together a repeating percussion track for us to follow, we recorded this "live off the floor" with no overdubs or post-production. I still think it packs a pretty good atmospheric punch. (For more information on the etymology of the word Dreyam, see the "Dreyam" link below.) And yes, there is a "Dreyam II", somewhere, but I can't locate it.
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| After Hours |
This is a later version of something I started several years earlier and was never satisfied with. I'm still dissatisfied, but less so than before. I can't call it complete, really, because the percussion track just loops over and over, and if you analyze the whole piece, you'll find that it's really just the same thing played three times, once with a sax solo, once with a trumpet solo, and a final time with (yes) the same trumpet and sax solos, played together. But it works! I do like the way the two very different solos work with each other in a strange and unsettling, but ultimately satisfying way. (or so sez me, anyway.)
Oddly enough, this all began when I found that cool acoustic bass sound on one of my synths. The title is simply a reference to the way the track sounds sort of like a bunch of guys jamming in a jazz club after closing.
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Just Friends |
Whoa. This is a bit of a departure. Pretty tune, who'da thunk it? Very much a rough idea, and frankly I have no idea how it got started. I think I had it in mind to give this rough track to a friend to write some lyrics for, but never got around to it. And I have no idea where the title came from. (And I have no idea why I have this compulsion to explain where the titles came from, either.) Sorry, the audio quality of this one really sucks.
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Pat's Tune |
The original version of this track is one of the first "real" pieces of music I ever wrote and recorded, but the quality sucked eight ways from Sunday: recording quality, performance quality, sound quality, arrangement quality... etc. etc. I re-worked it many years later, making it longer, significantly changing the feel (making it a bit jazzier), adding a bridge, and lots more instrumentation; this is the result.
The original version was the only tune I had written at the time that my then-girlfriend Pat actually liked, so I provisionally named it after her. This re-recording of it was done - I think - as a birthday present, but I don't think I ever actually gave it to her.
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piano tune |
What the hell is this? I can vaguely remember writing it, but honestly I have no idea why. I think the most likely explanation was that I was trying to prove to myself that I could write a decent tune strictly around a piano part, without a lot of window-dressing. I was probably going through a bit of an existential crisis at the time, where I worried that I had no actual talent, and had concluded that I was engaged in a pitiable campaign to disguise the fact with a lot of studio trickery, layers of sound upon sound, and a lot of synth-based pyrotechnics. (This may actually be the case.)
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metallic thing |
And now for something completely different. I think I was trying out something, here. Maybe planning to melt all my gold disco chains down into a Led Zeppelin belt buckle. HA! Very funny. Anyway, I think this tune has some potential, but suffers from lack-of-lyrics syndrome. Like the "Just Friends" tune above, I was probably planning to give it to someone who might feel like writing some lyrics for it.
For a while I was quite pleased with this tune, generally, until someone pointed out that that descending guitar/bass lick at the end of each riff is a direct rip-off from some Uriah Heep tune (Easy Livin'? Maybe.) Damn! Oh well, I guess if George Harrison can be guilty of "unconscious plagiarism" (My Sweet Lord/He's So Fine), I guess I can too. I'm pretty sure the rest of it is original, anyway. Still, if you listen to a lot of the second guitar solo, you can guess that I was pretty much running out of ideas by then.
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savage thing |
Another collaboration with Pete. And again, he programmed the drum track... thank goodness. I do rather like this one, mostly for its naked aggression. It's one of the most "uptight" tracks I've ever done, and I think it packs a bit of an emotional wallop for that reason. It's also another pretty decent "get in, get it done and get out" type piece, only a bit over two minutes in length. I think this one was done in my studio (as opposed to Pete's, that is.)
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rainstorm |
Still very much a rough idea, this eventually got somewhat reworked and incorporated into Superior: Journeys on an Inland Sea as "Storm Track", which you can download and listen to on the main "Music" page. The tape this came from must've been in pretty awful shape, because there are quite a few nasty glitches in this copy. Sorry.
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requiem |
Yet another collaboration with Pete. He and I were generally able to work together quite seamlessly, which is unusual for me because I can quite easily get into a childish snit if there's any sort of differing opinion about how to proceed.
If I remember correctly, I think this piece was done way back in 1985, shortly after the space shuttle Challenger blew up, a couple of minutes into its flight. This track was intended to be something of a memorial.
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late nite |
Another stab at being commercial and mainstream. Man, I just don't get it, do I? Anyway, I think I was going for a kind of track that might (in a completely different space-time continuum) get used as the theme for some late nite talk show, à la Letterman or Conan O'Brian. Punchy, jazzy, and ultimately, irritating. I think I succeeded.
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some kinda short, funky thing |
Hmm. We're getting farther and farther into questionable territory. I may seriously regret posting this stuff later on, if I happen to approach it in a different mood. This tune - as they say - needs no introduction.
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vibes |
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, Peter Maqua and I were thinking about how to do some kind of smash follow-up to his multimedia art piece The Creation Cycle (for which I did the music... see the first Music page for samples), and we came up with this grandiose concept of trying to map out - through art and music - the threads of commonality that transcend cultural boundaries, and bind all different peoples together, the working title for which was "Origins". It was a big concept, and frankly not much came of it, ultimately. Still, we did come up with a few pretty cool ideas.
One of the things I was doing as part of this project was trying to look for similarities in musical styles across cultural traditions. This piece was an rough experiment, playing around with Celtic musical styles and tying them together with North American roots music, with a few African and Oriental tweaks thrown in. There are many other similar experiments. I may post a few yet.
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Whales |
I got trés freaked out one evening watching this thing on TV about Japanese whalers, who persist in defying international bans on whaling and continue to chase bowheads, minkes and other whales into extinction. I started to wonder what it would be like for whale to hear the engines of a whaling ship getting closer and closer, knowing that sooner or later you'd have to go up to the surface to take a breath, and some fucker with an explosive-tipped harpoon would then try to shoot you with it. I fired up one of my analog synths and tried to get the sound of what I thought a large vessel like a whaling ship might sound like under water. It then occurred to me that the rhythmic pulse of the sound might serve as a good backdrop to a piece of music. Presto. Instant inspiration.
The guitar parts are really just placeholders that I never replaced with actual, decent tracks. And the whale sounds I overdubbed are actually humpback whale songs, and I don't believe humpbacks are hunted, so... bit of artistic license, there. Nevertheless, I like this idea for its originality. I might actually redo it properly some day.
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Grandpa's Airplane |
And now, on to the silly stuff. Sometimes my collaboration-buddy Pete and I would simply not be in the mood to write something serious, so we'd start forcing our various synthesizers to make weird, inane sound effects, and inevitably (given the state of mind we were usually in) the sounds would suggest some sort of foolish narrative that we would develop into an audio skit of some kind. (In fact, very much the kind of stuff that Radio Free Vestibule would later get buckets of money for, doing skits for the CBC. Hey, we were just way ahead of our time...) Somehow, the idea of all this very expensive gear being co-opted into making fart noises or dogs barking, or cows, or sheep, only made the end result just that much funnier; sometimes we would be reduced to completely helpless hysterics by the ridiculousness of what we'd come up with, usually late at night, and usually after a fair bit of alcohol and other intoxicants.
This track is the (perhaps inevitable) result of creating the sound of a misfiring, crapped-out airplane engine from one of our synths. Pete wrote the script, and we both collaborated on abusing our equipment: in other words, all of the sounds, apart from the voice, were synthesized.
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Third World Enterprises |
More silly stuff. Could we get the sound of miltary combat out of our equipment? Machine guns, whistling bombs, grenades, jets flying over, mortar shells? Hey, no problem. Easy as pie for a couple of guys who routinely use pages of the equipment User Guides for rolling joints (especially the "Danger! Never Do This!" pages.) Again, Pete wrote the script, and we both worked on the massive sound collage in the background. And again, apart from the voice of "Ray Pillage", all of the sounds came out of analog synthesizers.
I can only assume stuff like this is a bit of an "acquired taste." I recall gleefully playing this for my then-girlfriend, unable to keep from chuckling myself as I listened to it for the umpteenth time. She just looked at me with a somber expression on her face and shook her head slowly, like a doctor indicating that there is no hope.
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And Finally... |
| In The Belly of the Beast |
Not actually music, as such, but a music video. I cut together some cool animation from a movie (which shall remain nameless to avoid any copyright infringment lawsuits) and added a soundtrack comprised of various bits and pieces of some of my music. It's still rough, and I'm still working on it. I hope to tailor the soundtrack much more tightly to the visuals. This is just a proof to get a sense of the overall feel. But hey, I think it has potential. (And be sure to watch it full-screen! I think it has more... er, "impact" that way.) About 15 minutes long.
Being a video, this is a really quite huge file. It may take rather a long time to download, depending on the speed of your connection.
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