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Landschaft is about re-discovery, re-birth, resurgence. That marvellous Latin word Resurgam; "I shall rise again". It is about probing moods evoked by remembrance and experience. About old maps and photographs; rediscovered histories. It is about distilling those mood feelings down, adding in one's own perceptions to generate a synergy of the two: one's own experience added to one's perception of history. IN other words the components that make nostalgia. The ode to joy or the prayer to the souls of the departed. Music, amongst all of the arts is the medium best placed to do this through modulation of key and tempo.The found sounds and whimsy of Colleen and the slowed down orchestras of Stars of the Lid are spiritually close to what I am trying to achieve. With an admixture of Cliff Martinez, successor to Brian Eno.

"Indistinct Borders" [ landschaft 001 ], the start of the Landschaft journey, inspired by a collection of photographs of the pre-WWII German countryside. The music a collection of Satie-esque piano reflections interspersed with low key electronic works. The mood is dark green. From recollections of the lost and waning cultures of central and northern Europe I was inspired to create these mood pieces. At indistinct borders past histories are forgotten and maps are burned. Bones, ghosts and fragments of barbed wire are the only reminders of conflicts past. The flatlands of Northern Europe, scorched by conflict, destroyed, reborn, and destroyed again. A demolished City where wildflowers silently grow, cities renamed, reborn and renamed again. In the Landschaft, unbroken miles of conifer, 10,000 lakes where voices and music sink slowly to the lake floor. Legends born of optimism and fear promise rescue and a reversal of misfortune. But in the borders, no one remembers and all that remains is dust...

"Karelia" [ landschaft 002 ], happened by accident. It is an extension of the Indistinct Borders exploration. The mood remains dark Green, but shot with splashes of sunlight glimpsed through trees. I rested the music for a year or so and added sonic components to broaden the depth and width of the stereo image. Title piece, Karelia was a pure stream of conciousness event which surprised me. I happened across a beautiful resonant drone experimenting late one night with a Korg Karma synthesiser and I captured a 35 minute monophonic tone drifting the sound when the time seemed right. A simple response to the monophone's call was then etched over the top with Greenoak Crystal - a wonderful VSTi. Partner piece, Narocz is a sample based below the lake wash of marching pebbles across a forgotten shoreline. Inspired by a long out of print autobiographical travelogue "Chronicles of Lake Narocz" by Polish author Mieczyslaw Lisiewicz. The cover art - presented here on VIRB in square jewel case format is, in the real thing, a DVD Super Jewel Case format piece, crafted sleeve artwork, comprising Japanese hand printed paper and lettering inspired by master typographer Jan Tschichold.

"Nostalgia" [ landschaft 003 ] Most of the pieces are sparse piano based meditations with subtle ambience to add space, depth and modulation, and is something of a personal journey. The album is a distillation to 12 tracks; the best of a 24 track cycle. The cover photograph was taken by my father in 1947 in Singapore - the first of his extensive collection of photographs that I have restored. The mood is orange fire and gold leaf. Preview MP3 available on this VIRB site.

"Concerto No 1" [ landschaft 004 ] A work that evolved quickly and to a great extent under it's own momentum. A late night session of ideas-sketching produced a remarkable Korg Karma layered orchestral cycle. This turned into quite an upbeat Stravinski like gallop with pizzicato strings driving the piece along to a big mellow horn section crescendo. There followed a chamber music version - a perky stripped down skeleton of light instrumentation. Both of the upbeat versions remain in the Landschaft vaults. I then headed it off into darker water - the whole piece was time stretched by a 5 times multiple and a violin solo was laid over the top that turned it into a haunting pastoral epic more in the Vaughan Williams vein. For the sleeve art, I have produced a post-modern take on the classical sheet music folio with a wonderful typographic ornament - a fleuron, from a piece of found typography.

"Tone Poem for Hidden Places Viewed from a Train" [ landschaft 005 ], a canonical/fugal piece of rotating cycles in the dronology sub-genre. Dark, mesmeric, uplifting.

the lifting clouds reflected on water.
over bridges and earthworks.
when drewdrops form and are splashed by unknowing footfall as night turns to dawn.
a clattering wind in trees picks up crow call transported.
reflected in glass.
a journeying soul opens one eye in near sleep and absorbs in a moment this wonder and a mile is gone before a minute has passed.
repeating.
convergence and divergence eddies and ripples in this landscape of I know not where.
in my journey this day to see a friend.

"Jute" [ landschaft 006 ] I was playing around with some out-takes from my "Nostalgia" sessions, overlaying the same piece of music and staggering the start of the layers emulating a canon or round and it sort of took on a genius form of itself. A wonderful happy accident. Hear the extract of the final 67 minute piece here. It sits in the same sonic territory as Eno's Apollo and the Cliff Martinez Solaris soundtrack. 48 hours from start to upload! A preview MP3, an extract of the first 5 minutes or so is presented here - note you have to scroll the player down to see it. I do urge you to buy the full album that comes in a limited edition DVD format super jewel case with a hand made cover art insert. This is the sixth Landschaft album.

"and now the trembling light" [ landschaft 007 ] 17 October 2007. Cascades and glissandos, slowed-down church organs, a shimmering harmonic tension holds the listener in it's thrall; an epic in two parts in a vast reverbarent space. Inspired by a wonderful pastoral verse by Samual Palmer, "Shoreham: Twilight Time". The title, a metaphore for Palmer's own life-work - twighlight time: a fleeting moment of clarity before darkness closes in. Palmer's family destroyed much of his work immediately after his death evaporating his lifetime achievements. But "Shoreham: Twilight Time" survives and I wish to celebrate it's preciousness in one of my most harmonically structured works, it's title taken from this poem that I quote in part: "And now the trembling light Glimmers behind the little hills and corn, Ling'ring as loth to part; yet part thou must And though than open day far pleasing more (Ere yet the fields and pearled cups of flowers Twinkle in the parting light); ..."

"Silence" [ landschaft 008 ] Made in November 2007

"The True Path" [ landschaft 009 ] Made in November 2007, my most challenging work to date. Two vast slabs of sound each around an hour long. Part I, a solemn hymn; part II an epiphany. Both are near monotones. Each piece interplays very subtle repeating phrases - each identical in melodic content, but in differentiated temporal layers. Canonical in the tradition of Bach and Pachelbel. My aim has been to produce a work that is repeating but in such a rarified fashion as to approach abstraction - that stimulates the mind to build it's own pictures from a whole that is greater than the sum the parts. I commend you to listen to these works in a very quiet space, perhaps late at night with the volume turned down low or through high quality headphones. I have in July 2008 made five artworks to complement the soundwork, and have re-worked the cover-art - now an all transparent Super Jewel case with the inner and outer facing surfaces, and the CDs themselves referencing sections of the five artworks.

"Dark-Ambient Sampler" [ landschaft 010 ] Compiled 24 January 2008. Remixed edits of Silence 1 and 2 and The True Path, all 8-9 minutes long. A compilation I have put together for reviewers, press packs, lables etc. Presented in a CD format Super Jewel Case with new original artworkprinted on fine art archive-quality paper. The CDR is also archive grade; a Taiyo Yuden disc of exceptional beauty - so much so I have not printed on it!

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The application of the Golden Section in Adobe Photoshop Feb 14

The application of the Golden Section in Adobe Photoshop is quite easy to set up, and provides an invaluable template for composing image composition ... [ read on ]

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• Alan Walker - tone sculptor

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Discography - see all 10

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  Dark-Ambient Sampler

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  The True Path

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  Silence

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  and now the trembling light

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  Jute

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