This album started life some years ago as a few jingles I was asked to do for a Spanish electronic music radio show called  “Arctic Mist”. The brief was simple, I was free do more or less what I wanted but the words “arctic mist” had to be present in each jingle.  I got my wife Julie to speak these words in different ways and I set about treating them electronically to get some unusual and attention catching vocal effects. I got carried away with it but, what the hell, I thought I might be able to use them elsewhere. More recently I did. None of the original jingles actually appear in this album., it’s all original unheard stuff.

Two tracks of this 4 long track album are constructed over some sequenced rhythmical elements motoring along nicely and two contrasting with more slower melodic/choral style music. The common theme is loosely about the Arctic weather, it’s dramatic changes and each  track contains some treatments of the words “Arctic Mist”.  Because of the common wording, I wanted each track to have a quite different character and mood. The words are used sparingly at first and  only in  “Arctic Mist:Superstorm” are  they used  much more densely and  transformed radically as part of an electronic soundscape.

To create the voice treatments and the arctic environment  I used a battery of software and hardware devices patched together in many different ways. I spent many many many hours doing this! As mentioned above with  the exception of track 4, the treated voice sounds only appear from time to time so, in fact, much of the album is still synthesiser music and electronic sounds with support from some sequencer work. The long soundscape track 4 really was created specifically to enjoy and develop the many weird treatments of Julie’s voice. It is a more challenging listen than the other more immediate  tracks.
Synthesiser sound textures and  the transformation of real world sounds most definitely open up a whole new world of sound experience. This is what sets electronic music aside from other musical forms and, for me, is what makes it so interesting, challenging  and rewarding to do. I find it a bit sad that  too many commercial synthesisers remain  unchanged from their factory settings throughout their life. Yamaha once stated that about 90% of their repairs are to instruments returned in this state; a fairly disturbing  fact. The convenience of having a few nice sounds  built in for you on a popular synthesiser is all very well but it  does tend to lead to a degree of same ness or mundane ness as everyone else is using the same. Where’s the fun in that? I do try to avoid most of this and create something that is mine and a bit different. I do take risks and this may not be popular but I’m  definitely not in it for the money. I’m happy if some appreciate and enjoy my efforts and there’s a find a place for it  in their music collection .      

CD014  Tracks :-

1).   “Artic Mist: Call of the Deep”
2).   “Arctic Mist”
3).   “Artic Mist: Ride on the Ice”
4).   “Artic Mist: Superstorm”

16min 20secs   MP3 excerpt (128Kbit/s)
13min 12secs   MP3 excerpt (128Kbit/s)
10min 47secs   MP3 excerpt (128Kbit/s)