“Ombra

Already a long while ago, Timothy Bukrin suggested that I could release some of my music at Ambione (Thank You for that, Tim!). I agreed, and decided to produce a new album for this occasion instead of using one of my older recordings.

At that time, I had already started several projects that seemed promising, but for one reason or another they all didn’t develop like expected, or at least not into a direction I felt was suitable.

Then, in the summer of 2009, my wife Cecilia and me were invited to perform at the wedding party of two old friends, and in addition to composing some tracks for that occasion, I also produced two long tracks (about an hour each), to use them as a sonic background that could be faded in or out while I was performing with the synthesizers.

One of the tracks consisted of long spheric sounds, all playing the note F, while the other was a mix of atonal drones and noises. In both tracks the sound colours were constantly changing, sometimes smooth and slowly, sometimes dramatically.

Now, while developping my live set, it became clear at some point that I would not make use of these background tracks, and I put them on my archive harddisk.

In December 2009 then, while checking unfinished material, I gave the two tracks a re-listen, thought they were interesting and decided to try and produce some extra material (like pads, drone, chords, sequences and beats) that could be mixed against those first tracks in an ebb-and-flow fashion, to get one long, ever-evolving soundscape.

To produce those pads, chords etc. I first invented short phrases, recorded them and fed them to a sampler to toy around with them and process them further. This simple technique yielded so surprisingly good results, that in the end the “pads” evolved into pieces that were complete in themselves, and after doing three of them I realized that this could finally grow into an album that was suitable for my release on Ambione (so I gave the whole project the working title “Ambient Russia”).”

In the end, the original long tracks were prominent in just two or three pieces, and in some of the transitions. I liked the resulting album very much, and sent it to some friends to get their feedback, which was positive.