An interesting collection of textures. I always find such pieces more alluring in general.
I enjoyed the various feel of different instrumentation coming in and out. There's a distinct difference of FM synthesis revealing the tibetan bowls, or bell like timbre from the hand pan, entwining with very soft analog oscillators. Then some earthy sub harmonics. The steel guitar held to a swirling, tumbling kind of esthetic. The whole thing sits very well mix-wise, and holds both good dynamics, and equalization. Nicely done!
I'm left with a few questions though. Is this somehow about Marianthi Evans? Would that be the girl on the cover? If so or even if not, what was the meaning behind the cover? If any. Its not important, but strikes a curious question.
Nice Jeff, and I'm always interested in those who take a chance rather than those holding to safe. Let's hear more.
P.s. Such ambient jams make for a wonderful premise and remind me of my roots with our band, The Lampshades from here in NYC. Images of Gong, or a Oregon sort of way. Very nice!
Thanks very much for the comments. Marianthi is my son's fiance. We love her a lot and are delighted she is going to be part of our family. Bandcamp require an image of some sort for the track upload so I thought she would be a good choice. I used
Photoscape to add the picture effects. They live in London a long way from home. They came out about a year ago and she was interested in the studio and what I do in there. So I whipped up the groove based middle section. It was not mixed well at the time so I decided to remix it.
The Tibetan bowls are real from the Unify 2 library,
Purity. I love Unify a lot. It is an amazing instrument that is for sure. I reworked it yesterday and added in a cloud drum
(free download) and a lovely handpan software instrument. I brought the groove forward more and moved the synths back a bit. Voyager sounds nice on the bass end for sure. Software synths include 3 Unify's and Dune 3. Dune 3 is doing a very deep complex pad. The 3 Unify's are doing the percussion, Tibetan bells and a pad.
The lap steel jam was recent. Jeff is wonderful country player of course but he is also a Floyd fan too like me. I love what Gilmour does with lap steel. Its all over Floyd tracks. Jeff likes getting experimental with it though. So cut that in half and put the halves either side of the Marianthi groove. They ended up both in Em making cross fading nice. Its the voices that are special to me in the ambient sections. That IRIS 2 sound is amazing. Its a female talking and depending on how and where you play it she gets younger or older and more and less intense. It reminds me of
Blade Runner. Future. You cant understand her but she is just there. The chants are from VSynth. I might have landed on them by accident!
The Prophet 12 with is floor shattering sound is all over this. Deep and meaningful. Anything weird is the VSynth. A synth like no other that is for sure. I always wanted one and now I have finally got it. Odyssey is doing lines in there and I am soloing with the CS01 and the breath controller,. Highly expressive sound from that.
This is my Bandcamp page too. Sweeping The Sky is an album I did in 1995 but it never saw the light of day. A record company has started up here in another state and they have taken me on which is pretty cool of them. Read the info in this. It was basically all improvised with overdubs done after etc.. The older electronic music is my very early experiments in 1980 to 1984 period. You are free to play these tracks too for listening. On this page I have also just uploaded The Original version of Marianthi as well for interest. This was the track I created in Dec 24.
I started out in 1980 creating my first studio composing music professionally around 1985. 'Sweeping The Sky' and the tracks up to and including 'Zaphon' are more recent ideas. The music from 'Waiting' onwards are early 80-84 experimental ideas. There are some audio visual soundtracks in there...
jeffevansmusic.bandcamp.com
