ETHERREAL
1998
By the time that I was ready to start the next collection, I was considering myself proficient at Fast Tracker, and could now concentrate more on the musicality of what I was tracking, and I think some of that begins to show up here on these tracks. I was also beginning to consider having the tracks together in a format to perhaps tell a story or at least to flow, rather then having them be just a random sampling of music.
I’ve often dubbed this collection as being the Shameless Sample album, because I kind of made it my purpose to use some of my favourite drum loops as backing tracks, kind of a response to my former paranoia about perhaps getting sued by James Brown or some other artist for using them. Looking back on it now, it rather stupid of me to think that anyone of that caliber would pay me any attention, as an unsigned musician putting his stuff on the web for free.
I continued my theme of not having a theme, which is to say the tempos and musical styles on this collection vary, and of course there is the standard jungle element, in this case, there are two drum and bass tracks, two of my best in fact. When it was completed, I had intended to try and do something with it, even had a friend of mine do up jewel-case artwork, but of course nothing came of it. It was all do to second guessing and laziness I suppose.
This period of time was intensely musical for me, as I was fully entrenched in the environment at at a local recording studio; helping out on all manner of projects, and learning the ins and outs of recording engineering. But at the same time, in my own domain, I was still strictly limited to my lo-fi methods of composition. It was intensely frustrating, but I learned somehow to balance it all.
It was my intention to also remaster this album, but I was unable to find the original source files for the album, other than TechnoCow. As a result, the only versions I have now are a set of post-production re-drops where I have added global effects to the entire track — not my preferred method of delivery.