A few months back The Sound Evotion Competition caught my interest enough to explore the possibility of making a submission for Round 10. The basic gist of the competition is to use a 'sample pack' (of basic useful sounds) and make any song within the given guidelines. I normally wouldn't do something like this, preferring to work unrestricted: but I liked the usability of the samples and thought some composition-rules, plus a deadline, might actually aid me in producing something unique. So away I went...

Unfortunately, because of the busy activities of the end of the year, only half a song was created. I missed the deadline. Nevertheless I have recently had time to finish it off, fairly much as I had originally intended. If the round were still open this would be my submission. You can download the mp3 here:

New England mp3

New England xrns file - This is the raw file that plays perfectly in Renoise 1.8 - You will be able to see exactly how I put this together. The requirements of the competition stipulates that the song must be able to be played in this raw fashion, and is considered an 'old school' scene way of doing things. This also means, if you are a Renoise user, that you are free to remix the work however you want.

What of the song itself? Because of the competition restrictions it does not contain all the analogue elements I'm working hard at putting into all my other songs at the moment, e.g. voices and guitars. So I've tried to counter that by making the tune rather curly and odd. Yes, the dedication is to the place where I currently live, New England Australia. The attempted aim is to capture 'the vibe' in instrumental form - I've gone for a dreamy tension exploring both the open nature and the alienation of the countryside. The rest you can make up for yourself.

The release is trying to buy myself some time while I work on bigger long winded projects. This is my way of saying "I'm still here! Here's a goody!".

Now, some organising to do and then we can begin with releasing the old catalog in podcast form.