Tracks that are either abandoned, on hold or served as a study prior to creating a finished product.
Some are placeholders, waiting to be finished others are compositions at least over a decade old. Often ramshackle in production / fidelity, but with a certain je-ne-sais-quoi.
One could argue they are listed here for the sake of melancholy, but let's go with completeness instead.
Following a period of collecting old computers driven by a fascination with retro computer synthesis, this track was created to put the extended arsenal to use.
Acoustic guitars blend with chiptune synthesis to create a palette that balances between bossa nova plucking and squelchy synth leads.
The chiptune elemen...
A portrait depicting the nighttime, or more precisely its potential for both serenity and intense paranoia.
The track walks a fragile boundary between serenity and unease, where stillness seems to give way to quiet dread, though the track remains mostly tranquil.
The main pad-like motif as well as the muted trumpet-like scree...
The track unfolds around a shifting 9/8 rhythm and is rooted in the Hungarian Minor scale. By exploring its derived modes, however, it drifts toward a more Arabian than gypsy character.
The lo-fi output of the Ploytec PL-2 synthesizer provides a jagged texture in the bass line that revolves around more delicate ambie...
This composition acts as a demo to showcase all the possibilities of a particular instrument.
Apart from the percussion, all sounds evident on this recording stem from a Piggy, an Arduino-driven monophonic synthesizer developed by Pieter van der Meer of Tasty Chips Electronics.
There are a total of eleven Piggy tracks,...
Having been without the sonic nor lyrical inspiration to finish the pending work, "Byzantone" came about after deciding to spend a day off with the self-imposed assignment to "create a short groove in 7/8-time using the Byzantine (double harmonic major)-scale and its derived harmonies".
In less technical terms: the music...
An upbeat jam between a Commodore 64 and a single, clean electric guitar, backed by electronic percussions. The Commodore 64 caters for the bass line, lead lines, noise synthesis and arpeggiated chord stabs.
The tune itself clocks in at under 2 minutes, just along enough to showcase how cold, low fidelity computer sou...
A blend of metallic industrial percussion, jagged beats, a hefty dose of pulse-width modulation and ethnic instruments.
The narrative of this track shouldn't be unknown to those familiar with the psychological horror that is implied by Geoff Crammonds "the Sentinel".
Basically the feeling of inescapable dread as a practically ...
After originating as an exercise in rippling classical guitar arpeggios, the final result is far removed from the original mellow vibe. Keeping the dark harmonic minor tonality, but ditching the acoustic guitar of the demo, the compositions arpeggiated melodies have been synthesized by an Atari 2600, limiting the polyphon...
A short sci-fi esque "Hero vs. Villain"-theme executed in the chiptune realm with all sounds stemming from the 80's videogame era, featuring heavy pulse width modulation and rapidly arpeggiated chords.
The name being a pun on the late English psychedelic songsmith, of course.
All sounds (bar the kick drums) were created by ...
The piece is led solely by a single finger-picked classical guitar and minimal accompaniment, incorporating a rag-time rhythm lending a horse-falling-over flavour to the main theme.
At the end the original demo - recorded on mobile phone in a less than hi-fi manner - makes an appearance as the low fidelity ambiance seemed to ...
Driven by a cavernous ambiance, you could describe the feel of the piece, at the very best, as "moody".
The percussive opening repeats its motif endlessly, but with a time signature of 10/8 and its focus on fives, the accents appear to be floating more than they really are (to the western ear).
Vocoded drones float in and o...
Drawing from the counterpoint relationships central to classical and Baroque music, the main melody and bassline were composed following the strict rules that govern these interweaving voices.
Theoretically, these rules should impose a higher restriction on freedom of note choice, and define a more finite set of "possible ...
A short instrumental piece that began on acoustic guitar and is performed entirely on piano.
Aside from a single bridging section featuring a brief electric guitar accompaniment, the piano carries a repeating motif, gently shifting every few bars, giving a quiet transformation.
At the same time delicate stringed textures...
Unashamedly summery, Sun-Kissed Daze began as a study in creating a danceable groove across unconventional and shifting time signatures namely 7/4 for the verse, 12/8 for the chorus.
A wide stereo image is introduced by a phased electric piano starting off the song in a loungey manner, before the thin, clicking percussion ki...
The sources for the sounds used within this composition stem from the battery powered hand-held KORG Monotron synthesizer.
While this device is notorious for its hiss and the small, tinny sound emanating from its internal speaker, the recorded line-output falls in a whole other ballpark.
Iin conjunction with the extreme, wide...
The result of looking suspicious carrying a stereo mic setup into a petting zoo, with a mind set out to record a sow roughly twice the size of an average human.
Apart from piano (sequenced in the MikroWave app for Android) and a single 8-bit synth, all sounds stem from the field recordings mentioned above.
Created after a trip to my maternal country of Brazil, it might come as no surprise that the opening rhythmic element is in fact a berimbau.
However, the world music-tag quickly loses its relevance there as the electronic manglings creep in with stuttering glitchy effect to add jagged, distorted edges to the r...
..."preached at the altar of decay", of course. This can be described as pastiche for those of an "industrial metal"-bent. Guitars were down-tuned to B where, despite the floppiness of the slacker tension, the lower register adds some suitable grit and menace.
Further sonic manglings are catered for by an Elektron SID ...
Heliopolis arrives at your ears in three distinct movements:
An eastern-tinged opening, in which low flute-esque sounds pair up with percussive glass sounds and wooden hits. This slowly leads into the drumbreak section where filtered slap bass coupled with effected guitars and washes of synthesizer pick up the pace...
One of the louder tracks on display. Loud drum snares and distorted guitars make for a very violent mix, led by a chugging groove backed by industrial washes which is probably reminiscent of what would happen if there were a transitional album between Antichrist Superstar and Mechanical Animals, if that was wri...
A surprisingly complete track considering it was created in a focused and inspired period, which meant most ideas were actually unfinished when moving on to the next.
The beat is actually yours truly "phlegm-beatboxing" just to coin a term. The overall feel should evoke a feeling of entrapment in a cold cave, with stalactites spit...
A track quirky enough to be named after the protagonist of a science fiction movie series which was watched obsessively during the same period.
A two-chord crunchy guitar vamp driving the piece is accompanied by cut up sounds and an acoustic bass distorted into a nasal, square-wave howl.
Released as part of a collection of tr...