Solace

Released: July 2024

Equipment: Waldorf Iridium synthesizer, Arturia KeyStep Pro sequencer

Listen:

As spring turned to summer my personal life remained somewhat turbulent but despite this my musical productivity continued at the same steady pace. I'd usually have a track 'on the go' with the latest rough mix on my phone, listening back to it while out & about, doing chores, or at loose moments. Once a piece was 'good enough' (I'd do the final adjustments & mixdown when assembling the resulting album) I'd put it into my 'In progress' playlist and within a day or so I'd usually have started on the next track. This regular practice provided a steading point in my otherwise unsettled routine and when I came to assemble the album the name Solace seemed the perfect summation.

As with the last two collections I used my Iridium as the sole synthesizer. Its wonderfully intuitive interface had become second nature to me by this point but I continued trying out features that I'd overlooked or barely touched upon in the past. One of these was the 'travel' option where an oscillator would cycle through its wavetable and provide a gradually morphing timbre, resulting in tones that would drift & mutate as they sounded. Along with other slow modulation techniques this produced a sense of constant change underlying the structure of the notes, perhaps a reflection on how my life path seemed at the time.

By contrast the song structures were generally simpler than previous ones. Time signatures were all 4's, 5's and 6's (although I did mix them up within songs a couple of times) and I mostly stuck to a straightforward verse/chorus/middle pattern with just a few missed or added bars to spice things up. One notable change was with chord progressions - I found myself using smaller (tone or semitone) intervals between chords which led to some 'interesting' scales & transitions. The songs ended up a bit longer than usual (generally around the five minute mark) as I gave them space to let things develop in their own time while trusting that future me would be able to fill in the gaps as required.

The end result is an album that, to my ears, feels introspective & intimate. The instrumentation is fairly sparse, the mutating tones add an elusive slipperiness, and the echo & panning give an airy spaciousness to the songs. For me making music is often more of a process of exploration & discovery than working towards an envisioned target and this collection feels like an accurate snapshot of my emotional state at the time. And I'm not sure what more I could hope for.

Transverse starts things off with a tumbling 5/4 rhythm underpinning a series of melodic sections with swirling washes of sound. Some nice contrasts between the lead tones in each part and the transitions into & out of the middle section.

Kaleidoscope uses an evolving central sequencer line with other elements swirling around it. The middle section is in a different time signature which was a bold experiment for me! The song was inspired by memories of the children's toy and the sense of wonder that such a simple device could evoke.

Solus came out of a solitary period for me and attempts to capture the strange mix of loneliness & contentment in my own company. The alternating bars in 5 & 6 time give it an appropriately unsettling ambience which I was rather pleased by.

Clubland was on the verge of being thrown away before random inspiration added the 'skanking' organ line which brought everything together. I always wanted to play the electric organ and this is probably my best effort at it so far. Some nice chords take it in unexpected directions and I really like the bridge out of the middle section. A nice hint of the Caribbean too.

Twilight paints a gentle picure of slowly fading light and gradually blurring perceptions. I like the swirl of textures while the sequencer maintains the constant passing of time.

Nemo has a bouncing 'abyssal' rhythmic backing with a mix of tinkly & muted parts adding to the 'deep sea' feel. The name comes from 20,000 leagues under the sea which also alludes to the idea that it might go on just a little too long.