Electronic music often uses space as a theme but the world’s oceans are less used themes. Space research is better provided for. It is said that we know more about the surface of Venus than our own ocean floor. Oceanography is a new if comparatively poorly funded science compared to space. So we still know little about the largest part of the Earth’s surface. Not long ago scientists believed the ocean floor was featureless and nothing could live down there under such intense pressure and total darkness. Some even thought the deep ocean floor was so cold it was covered in ice. We now know how wrong they were. There are mountains much higher than Everest, deep ocean trenches, ridges with active volcanoes, earthquakes hydrothermal vents and thousands of species of aquatic life some very strange and fully adapted to the darkness and the intense pressure. Life however is slow mostly living off what drifts down from above or off the chemistry of the hot hydrothermal vents.
I recently read an interesting book about it and thought I’d use oceanography as the theme for this album. Regarding the track names, Sonar is not only a powerful underwater navigation and exploration tool but also the name of my DAW used to record and create this album. Blue water refers to the depth of water where divers just experience only blue all around them neither being able to see the surface or the bottom, just blue. Floating in these depths can lead to a dangerous false sense of what is up and what is down. Black Smokers are the volcanic vents that issue toxic fumes that strange colonies of creatures live off like tubeworms. There is some debate that life on Earth itself may have started here.
This album started off as a result of just testing my equipment after I moved house and it was subsequently slowly brought back into service during the studio rebuild. Music technology is complex, so after such a long break it seemed a good idea to put basic ideas for an album together along with the studio rebuild project. The trouble with this was I tended to get involved with the music side and forget progressing with rebuild. So my studio is still not finshed but having some music completed is a great relief. It Is offered here for anyone who may be interested.
1). “Sonar Soundings” 9min 2sec
2). “Blue Water”” 7min 32sec
3). “Black Smokers” 7min 30sec
4). “Tubeworm Army” 11min 56sec
5). “Gale Force” 7min 47sec
6). “Touching the Deep” 10min 44sec
MP3 excerpt (128Kbit/sec MP3 excerpt (128Kbit/sec)
MP3 excerpt (128Kbit/sec)