Available to listen to and buy at Bandcamp
Release date: Nos 1 and 2, 06 June 2025; No 3, 20 August 2025, No 4 10 September 2025, No 5 05 January 2026
Format: digital download. Artwork and typography by Landschaft.
Music for Sacred Spaces No 1: I am not attracted to the contrived concept of 'performance'. I prefer the idea of absorbtion and serendipitous chance encounter in terms of the musical experience, as one would encouter birdsong on a country walk or overheard conversation on a train. So here I position a work, blending with the stonework, dark wood and stained glass of Lancaster Priory church. This album came about through a fortuitous 'seeding' based upon Eno's 'Discrete Music' concept. Instead of tape loops, I have utilised a cascade of randomiser sequencers, one triggereing the other, each cascade triggering my trio of Moogs. The randomisation is tonally and rhythmically frameworked and each Moog is clocked to the other making a coherent musical form, but within the framework, transition and evolution is initiated by the conjunctions that arise fortuitously as the sequences drift in and out of polyphony and polyrhythmically.
I love the uniqueness imposed by my Moogs. No presets, no save; they even sound different when switched back on after a previous composition session. The combinations produced by my randomiser configuration, intentionally set to minimise repitition by setting parameters to prime numbers and utilising Euclidian geometry produce the intended chance conjunctions.
When listening to the founding mothers and fathers of electronica, I dreamed of being able to make their music, and now forty years later I am realising that ambition. There is still a place in the Landschaft canon for virtual instruments and sample based emulations, but the feeling of creativity is stronger producing from a pure analog source. It just feels more real. I will soon be introducing another instrument (in the loosest sense; a collection of modules comprising a synthesiser) and will incorporate that into future works.
Here I evoke the mood feelings I experienced at a Quaker Silence at the Friends Meeting House, Lancaster. We were welcomed into this space flooded with light, and spent an hour in quite reflection. The work again makes use of the Discrete Music concept, each voice rebounding off the other making harmonies by chance. The two simple Moog voices in some small way remind me of the minimal compositions of John Surman.
This simple work comprising identical brass patches of cross modulated Moog Mother 32s is triggered by two stacks of fractal sequencers (Harmony Bloom and Rhythmiser) set to Locrian mode. Locrain, of the six 'church modes' is the less frequently encountered. Here is the suggestion of John Donne - 'weep ye no more sad fountain', but my context here is confined to the mood tension of the churches set apart from communities, or more accurately, villages de-populated leaving the church as isolated survivor (spatialy and/or spiritually). In the landscape; mossy remnants tucked away behind curtains of yews they sit, waiting.
This three part work is the result of compositional decisions and instrumental experiment. The compositional structure is based on Lydian modal scales, constructed in curated instances of rules-based randomisers. These are used as triggers for two Moog Mother 32 synthesisers (M32). The M32 are each set identically with a rich brass patch with a long attack and delay envelope. These were both routed, one to the left one to the right audio inputs of Eurorack module Mojave by Qu-Bit, a granular processor - set to a gentle manipulation of the incomming signal. Parameters of Mojave were modulated by Instruo modules Eas, Ochd, Ochd expander, Cnoc (the Instruo modules were extensively cross patched). The audio out was recorded in Cubase 12. The two M32 were both triggered separately by randomiser Rhythmiser set to Lydian mode.
A number of parts were recorded, each an evolution of the previous. 02, 04, 03 were retained.
Take 2 - both M32 were triggered by separate instances of Rhythmiser set to C3, each configured differently.
Take 4 - First Rhythmiser set to C#3; second instance set to G#2. In addition a track of Olafur Arnalds Evolutions library (patch 01 Ensemble Sul Tasto) was laid down triggered by another randomiser Harmony Bloom, set to a three note trigger.
Take 5 - First Rhythmiser set to C#3; second instance set to A#2. In addition a track of Olafur Arnalds Evolutions library (patch 01 Ensemble Sul Tasto) was laid down triggered by another randomiser Harmony Bloom, set to a three note trigger.
Within Cubase, two mono audio streams (deriving from left and right channels of the Mojave output) were piped into two separate Cubase mono channels, and these were routed to a 1st order ambisonics VST reverb Doverb which distributes sound around 3d space very effectively creating a 3d spatialisation. Then that was downmixed to a stereo master recording.
On all takes, EQ was was normalised with VST effect Voxengo Curve EQ, meeting EQ thresholds visualised in the end of chain VST analysis tool True Balance (set to an EQ profiles based on Brian Eno's Apollo album).
I took the decision to reverse the order of each take: Part 1 = Take 05, Part 2 = Take 04, Part 3 = Take 02, making a progressive reduction/minimalisation.
In making these works a strong mood feeling surfaced, prompted by a reading of the opening to section 'The Burial of the Dead' to TS Eliot's 'The Wasteland'.
These slow works evoke for me the referencing of the Holy Grail and Wasteland imagery in that opening section to the poem. The Grail a symbol of the power of fulfilment embodied in material form, under guardianship of a keeper; Wasteland, the mythical wilderness, a foil to the power of the grail; the Wounded King offering the potential for redemption or annihilation. Together forming a rich symbol of the power of renewal. So we return to Eliot who, gloominly, then with a note of optimism proclaims: "April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stiring." It takes a leap of faith to penetrate Eliot's deep symbolism, but reading his biography of the period he composed the work, his was a personal struggle of Arthurian scale, and thus the context of "The Wasteland" metaphor is revealed. So, we move onto the conceptual outline of my interpretation, upon which the listener can superimpose their own imagery:
Part 1: The King
Part 2: The Wasteland
Part 3: Redemption or Annihilation
The inspiration for this album was the chance discovery of a remarkable church, St Helen's at Brant Broughton just off the A17, mid way between Newark and Sleaford in Lincolnshire. My eye was caught (as was Pevsner's) by the spire, visible from the main A17 road. A walk though the village led us to the imposing slab oak door; thankfully unlocked. You never know what you will find in rural parish churches. St Helen's is is richly decorated with splendid wrought iron and a fabulous painted ceiling. The church is much restored as were many in the 1870s gothic revival frenzy - St Helen's, sympathetically. Of note, the core village houses of Brant Broughton seemed much grander than those one would expect in a rural backwater. That means money and perhaps the association of the village and church with the Baronetcy of Sutton, as well as proximity to the Great North Road of coaching days provides the answer to that question.
Music for Sacred Spaces No 5 comprises two long-format works: 'The Golden Bowl' takes imagery inspired by the biblical passage in Ecclesiastes 12:6 "or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." This passage can be taken at the metaphorical or literal-biblical level. At it's simplest it is a lesson on mortality. The second piece 'Misericord' references an arcane architectral feature of medieval church architecture - the misericordia - 'mercy' in Latin, that expands to 'seat of mercy': a compact folding rudimentary seat support for monks during long periods of standing prayer. Many are elaborately carved, often with representations of secular subject matter. They take their place with 'green man' symbology, discretely woven within the Christain paradigm, earlier pre-Christian earth based imagery.
These simple works are a weave of modular synthesiser voices. The structural interpretation and inspiration, as many will recognise is based around Eno's 'Discrete Music' / 'Music for Airport' concepts of minimalism and economy. I have adopted the practice of leaving plenty of air for the music and timbres to breathe. The sonic language is concisely expressed. As with Eno (and Arvo Part), 'deceptive simplicity' was my starting point in the making of the two pieces in this my latest Music for Sacred Spaces, the last of five collections that I have worked on more or less in parallel for the last couple of years.
Production notes: The timbral bedrock is provided by my two Moog Mother 32s configured to a rich brass sysnthesis. Lurking in the background there is a tone supplied by Makenoise Sub Timbral Oscillator. My aim, realised here was to make two parallel streams of music drifting to and from a tonal centre, settling into a key then modulating away before drifting back. I achieved this with Qu-Bit Bloom, described as a 'fractal sequencer' - which evolves note sequences from a core ruleset (defined within the algorithmic architecture of the sequencer) into branches. There are two separate but clock-synchronised sequence streams. Getting both to produce harmonically consistent sequences several layers deep, each evolving to their own separate rules built my deep knowledge of this powerful and rewarding module. Thus the entire instrumentation was framed entirely within the hardware domain. Production was handled digitally by necessity in Cubase 12, running the main two channels through 1st order ambisonics (via VCT plugin abDoverb) downmixed to stereo. No timbral colouration was added within Cubase. EQ was nudged using FabFilter ProQ3, my go-to EQ, monitored via True:Balance by Sonible set to a numbr of reference audio sources. I really only use half a dozen or so plugins and True:Balance is top of my essentials list.