In the last few months, after finishing my 2nd record (All The Way Up still available on iTunes, Bandcamp & your local public radio in the US & Australia) I went & wrote, recorded & finished 2 full length instrumental albums. The first one is called WHITE SANDS HARBOR, 1984, it chronicles the day of a woman astronaut during her training for a space shuttle launch in...well, 1984. The album has a very sparse, delicate, minimalist & fragile sound it it. It was written while I was listening mostly to French, British & Italian romantic film music. I wanted to create the image of an emotional soul, lost in the desert & filled with uncertainty, like an in-training astronaut would be on their first day on the job. The second one is called LE VOYAGE DE CELESTE, it takes the (this time more experienced & weathered) woman astronauts journey deep into the universe by the way of intergalactic & time travel through quantum physics. The sound this time is much darker, raw ambient & at times aggressive. I was listening to mostly to post WWII Hungarian classical music and also minimalist western composers such as Philip Glass & Michael Nyman. For the first time, I learnt & incorporated classical music techniques into my composition methods! I decided to curtain & close this space instru-mental trilogy with a 3rd album, this time written from the Soviet/Russian point of view, the other side of the wall. Think of Clint Eastwoods Letter To Iwo Jima/Flag Of Our Fathers, US/Japan dichotomy. The album will feature folk songs, DDR electronic meltdowns & propaganda anthems dedicated to Soviet space & literature icons such as Gagarin, Nabokov, Tereshkova, Mir, Buran, Laika etc...Back when I was a young boy, I attended school in a communist friendly country & so they taught us that Soviet space stuff a lot, I know it like the back of my hand! This time, I will try to document the recording sessions for this last album by taking pictures & notes, so people learn & understand how real music gets born. Its not an easy ride. No-one has listened to the full thing (21 songs completed, 10 more to go) so far except a few journalists, publishers & the astronaut featured on the cover, Dr Anna Fisher (the most senior active astronaut in the world & the first ever mother in space). One of the reasons Dr Fisher approved the use of her image was the universal & educational values these projects carry, values that humanity can benefit from in these challenging times for our specie. I have no idea when or if this music will be released to the greater public. You can check out a select few pieces taken from these projects on my Vimeo in the meantime. Godspeed, Ilias / Илиас
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 05:53:10 +0000
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