Whilst my house move continues, I find myself without my little sound studio set-up. So I am resorting to the Netbook, with Ableton Live (Launchpad edition). This has sent me back down the path of making ambient drone pieces. This is a small looped arpeggiated sample I made using Simpler, that has had grain delay and stretching treatment.

I watched the sun disappear this evening and the sky slowly became a deep rich lilac colour. This matched the sense of mood that dusk emitted.

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Lilac.mp3
Lilac 96kbps.mp3

I’m fighting off a nasty chest infection, but I at least I managed to get Christmas Day out of the way before spending the next three days in bed. Frankly, I hate this feeling of decay in me. So here’s something sombre in tone that reflects how I am feeling right now.

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Decayed.mp3
Decayed 96kbps.mp3

The dark afternoon is playing around with my senses, leaving me feeling heavy and lethargic. I have to work another late shift tonight, so I took an hour away from the day job to make something that I could run through my headphones to let me relax and drift for a while.

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Drift.mp3
Drift 96kbps.mp3

The clouds are hiding the sunshine despite what the weather man said.

This simple piece was made in the early hours, with thoughts of distant places, where its guiding light might just be breaking through.

I’ll be putting up the latest compilation sometime over the weekend, but I wanted to put this up first.

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Guiding Light.mp3
Guiding Light 96kbps.mp3

An early morning start allowed Niall and I to catch the mist rising from the levels as we drove through them. It’s such a beautiful place at times. This piece aims to capture that stillness.

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Levels.mp3
Levels 96kbps.mp3

This is to be the last stretch piece for a little while as I feel it’s time to get back to creating original work for you to be able to download and enjoy. This is one of my favourite pieces of music, when played forwards, at normal speed. Once stretched and effected however, it sounded better when played backwards, feeling slightly less predictable.

Turn out the lights/hide the light from your eyes, lie back and give youself 20 mins to listen to this. Slow your breathing, bring down your heart-rate and drift off.

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Another drone that I worked on last night, is this. It’s made me wonder? Seeing as the 1980’s sound is in vogue at the moment, maybe an Eighties Pop Drone release would be a good idea? Feedback anyone? I’d have to try and get some sort of clearance for the samples used, I know and that could be a bit of a niggle. I could just create them and stream them, maybe?

Here is the opening to a-ha’s 1985 release made 15 minutes long and dream-like.

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As you may know I am a fan of @mapmap on Twitter. His work and collaborations at Dust Breeding are a constant source of pleasure. So much so, that one piece he has made in an Unrecnow/oo-ray recording session, was so gorgeous that I had to extend it. Seven minutes have become 56 and I think it’s a beautiful soundscape.

The original can be found here.

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Sun Spots.mp3

After the great feedback and the most visitors in one day from yesterday’s track, I have decided to create some more of these.

This is the rather sombre and brooding track ‘Faust Arp’ from Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ album.

Lots of stretching and a thick cloud of Reaktor reverberation make this sound totally immersive. At 33 minutes long, you’ll need to take a little time out with a pair of headphones and a comfortable prone position. I used it to get back into REM sleep in the early hours of this morning, it seems ideal for this. It took me underwater, swimming with seahorses. Where will it take you?

This piece can, once again, only be offered up as a 320kbps stream as I don’t have copyright clearance.

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I am having immense fun using the netbook to create vastly stretched out soundscapes from just a few minutes of music. This is a beautiful Talk Talk track called ‘ I Believe In You’. It is essentially just the track pulled out into a vast 50 minute piece. To get the most out of this, it requires a late night, a tired mind and comfortable listening position. If I get good feedback I will explore creating more of these.

This piece will only be offered up as a 320kbps stream as I don’t have copyright clearance.

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