Saturday, April 18, 2009

Karmic Motivation

To celebrate tonight's Fractal gig, here is a 7-minute or so long studio improvisation from the early days of Fractal.


The name was originally inspired by the soundscapes Jim creates on his Korg Karma. Jim plays keyboards rather than bass for this piece, which opens with Nic's inspired solo-ing over the top and Paul's syncopated drumming giving structure to the opening section. The improv gets into some heavy riffing at the end, then resolves to a peaceful close. 

Enjoy...



Sunday, March 22, 2009

Echo Chamberlain Suite

On Continuum (2003), there is a three part live re-improvisation, the Echo Chamberlain Suite. Parts 1 and 2 were recorded live at a gig in 2002, but part 3 only exists as a few seconds of silence. Now, for the first time, the full original studio improvisation can be heard, first take as it was created, in the summer of 2001, including the extended part 3, almost 20 minutes....

1. Get a nice quiet sleep

2. A piece for our time

3. For the second time in our history

This song was captured in the wild, edited and mixed by Adrian, who also named it. The inspiration for the name is that Nic had just got a new delay loop pedal (the Echo Chamber) and in part 2, it seemed that they were all playing in different times, with the loop cutting across everything else. This triggered the idea of "a piece (of music) in their own time", and the titles for the three sections are taken from Neville Chamberlain's Peace In Our Time speech.