The Album 'All in the Golden Afternoon...' is now ready for release, but I need some help getting it promoted and distributed! Artwork is also being sorted out for the sleeve design.

Work is now underway on the next album.

After spending time in various Sheffield bands playing keyboards through the mid 1990s I sat down to studying classical music for two or three years. Then the big technological breakthrough with Digital music production and the birth of VST instruments, meant that I could realise some of the large scale projects, which had been previously milling around as ideas recorded onto tape. It also meant I could have access to the sounds of Mellotron, Hammond Organ, Moog synthesizers and everything orchestral, that up to this point would have required spending thousands and thousands of pounds.

My early influences are never far away and I guess there will always be a sentiment of progressive rock lurking in the background. It has been great to hear the sound of the Mellotron back in fashion, but I love to look back to the way it was used by the likes of King Crimson, Genesis, Yes, Pink Floyd and Barclay James Harvest. I learnt to play keyboards on a Hammond Organ, and I think that has informed my style in a way that would differ from learning firstly on piano. Guitar is my second instrument - and I predominantly stick to acoustic although there is electric on some of my work. Vocals are the third instrument, and are they're pretty much in disguise. The spoken vocal sample for instance on 'Shining, Really Brightly' is me sounding like an 10 year old, and elsewhere I have relied on some technical tricks to layer my vocals to create something a bit more dramatic. A key starting point for several of the tracks on the album "All in the Golden Afternoon" came from samples of spoken poetry. The title "All in the Golden Afternoon..." is the first line of the poem that features as a preface to the book "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll, and sampled fragments of the poem inspired the title track. Elsewhere on the album I used a fair bit of sampled birdsong to create the impression of an English Summer, as seen through the eyes of Lewis Carroll and other Victorian writers. If you like ambient, electronica, prog rock and classical music there may be something here for you. Hope you like it.


Ian