28 Nov 2025
I want to kick off with something directly music-related so I'll talk a bit about my new album Otherworldly which came out in September. Here are a few notes on how the album was written, instruments used, inspiration, etc.
I began the album in 2020, during lockdown, but I was more inspired by classical music at that time and wasn't into spending time at my computer. Things kicked off properly in 2021 when lockdown really started to lift and we could start going to parties again. I guess I realised how important it is to go to music events and socialise with your fellow scene members. Otherwise, you forget why you're making music in the first place.
The quirk of my first album Geolinguistic was that it was all in one key, but the tracks were stylistically different. (I can't remember why I did that but I think it was largely because I wanted to do a through-mixed album and that seemed like the best way of doing it.) For Otherworldly I wanted to have a range of keys but for the sound-palette to be tighter, so the unifying factor would be the instruments used. The first thing I wanted was an analogue 808 as I'd been listening to Adam F's Colours a ton and there's prominent 808 in a few of those tracks. I got hold of the Behringer 808 clone and used this on basically every track, starting with the beat in 'Water Channel'. I also dug out my folder of dusty breakbeats and, of course, kept the flute, melodica, and wurly close at hand.
I also wanted all the bass lines to be on bass guitar, possibly because I had been listening to too much of the Upsetters and just felt that it needed to sound as organic as possible. I already owned a four string Tanglewood which I bought off of Globular, but in 2023 I upgraded to a five string Cort. (Completely by accident, I bought a very similar bass to the one that was used on Messages from the Resonator! I think when trying it in the shop, I subconsciously recognised the sound of the lowest string as it was used on 'The Observatory'.) I joined a rock band in London and this substantially improved my abilities. I think it's also improved my bass writing, so I highly recommend learning the bass to all downtempo producers.
Many synths came and went during the recording of Otherworldly. I had used the Bass Station 2 extensively already and this continued to be my go-to monosynth. I also got hold of a Minilogue XD in 2021 and wrote on it for two years. Unfortunately this one turned out to be a dead end sonically; I think the filter wasn't quite right for my sound. You can hear a little bit of it in the last track of the album, but very little else survived. Eventually I traded this out for a Novation Peak which I had learned to use whilst working on Messages - not a particular inspiring device but a good workhorse. Much later on I got a Microfreak and this turbo-charged my writing, so much so that I later swapped up to the Minifreak. (You can hear the voice engine in the phonetic alphabet section in the intro to the album.)
I'm lucky to know many great guitarists and two people helped with this aspect of the album. The first is Jason Bond who I lived with at university in Edinburgh. Jason has been playing in bands since forever and has a great knowledge of music tech. I invited him over thinking we would work "in the box", instead he brought a beautiful old amplifier and we terrorized our neighbours. Jason appears in Desert Sky and Pyramidion. His riff in Desert Sky was one take, with no edits - what chops! The second guitarist is Toby Snowden who I know through the Deep Sea Frequencies (aka Psy Jelly) crew from Bristol. Toby moved to London around the same time that I did to study guitar, and it was great to see his abilities developing over the years whilst I worked on the album. His knowledge of harmony exceeds my own and he has brilliant melodic ideas. Toby appears in Resonant Structure and Water Channel - in the latter, much of the pad is reversed guitar playing, and the cascading series of notes and harmonics towards the end derives from a technical exercise, but sounds great as a synth-like "arp".
I tend to think of musical projects in terms of the albums I'm listening to whilst creating them. The following were in rotation whilst writing Otherworldly:
Adam F - Colours
Future Sound of London - Lifeforms
Avalanches - Since I Left You
Shpongle - Are You Shpongled?
Opus III - Mind Fruit
Easy Star All Stars - Ziggy Stardub
The Orb - U.F.Orb
Flying Lotus - Until The Quiet Comes
Leftfield - Leftism
These are all melodic albums with interesting harmony and quite a soft production style. They have big dynamic range and very organic instrumentation, which is what I've tried to carry over to Otherworldly. The mix, too, is quite muted and relatively quiet compared to modern psydub and more in keeping with 90s ambient dub. (Hopefully it's not too bassy…) I have considered releasing the premasters, as perhaps some listeners may want to hear it at full dynamic range on a good sound system - if anyone wants a copy, let me know!
Harmonically, each track oscillates between two chords, a pattern which is set up in the introduction to Desert Sky and continues right until the end. The relationship between the two chords varies from song to song but I think it ties the album together in a way. The key structure of the album is symmetrical (Eb F A G G A F Eb), a happy accident which came about very late in the writing process. I like to think that it's the pyramid evoked in "Pyramidion": symmetrical and with a peak in the middle.
On reflection I probably should have written something a little more dancefloor-oriented, but given what I was listening to at the time, it was inevitable that I would wright a slower more "live" sounding set of tunes. Next time it will be all bangers, I promise.
I'll come back to the track names and album name in a future post. For the next few I'll be looking at technology, the internet, and creativity in a slightly more reflective mode.
Thanks again for checking out my website!
G
05 Nov 2025
Welcome to my new blog! I created this website in 2021, but soon after I landed me a job, and for the next four years I didn't have time to do anything with it. Having released Otherworldly, however, I've now got a bit of breathing space. I'm hoping to write some music reviews, condense some thoughts on music and meaning, and maybe keep a creative diary for my next project.
I'm going to start with a few thoughts on making Otherworldly and how this project progressed., then I'll move on to some thoughts on digital culture and where this is (or isn't) headed. I'll try and keep the think pieces to a minimum and focus on music, but I can't make any promises…
I'll be putting notifications about new posts on social media until I can figure out how to send out emails from this domain, so check out the links tab above. I also want to put a view counter on the page - remember those??
Thanks for joining :)
G