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During the early and mid seventies I worked on the startup
of the Virgin label, and also met most of the leading figures
in German electronic/rock music. People like Klaus Schulze, Amon
Duul II, The Can, Manuel Gottsching, Edgar Froese and so on.
Their music was obviously years ahead of its time and I was quite
inspired by it. By the end of the seventies I was playing in bands myself, but due to a lack of resources it was impossible for me to do the kind of music that was in my head. I built my own studio and made a few records - now highly obscure - as Lives Of Angels. By 1989 I was so disheartened by the process of trying to make a living out of music that I gave up on it altogether. I started drawing and painting: http://www.gacoc.demon.co.uk Art and computers came together for me from 1996 onwards and I became immersed in the online/digital world. I still had a lot of music in my head, but didn't give much thought to actually doing anything about it. Early in 2000 I remarked, in an offhand way, to a friend that
I wished there was an equivalent to Photoshop for the digital
manipulation of sound. He gave me some SoundForge software and
that was all that was needed in order to re-awaken my active
interest in music. With just a couple of thousand poundsworth
of equipment (most of it the cost of a PC which I already had,
of course) it was now possible to have a setup that might have
cost a half million twenty years previously. I came up with the b®and name The Chilling Fields (it seemed to evoke the character of what I was doing) and went to work.
The digital sound manipulation process is an intriguing one, and it has enabled me to express ideas that I thought I would never be able to share. At the heart of it all is the computer - really the only 'instrument' as such that I am using. Everything else is simply raw material, a medium for the computer and the processing software to get traction from. The music itself is a product of pure imagination, although I list influences on my website at: http://www.wonderport.com/TCF/index.htm where you can hear a range of things I have released on Disparate, Works in Progress and also some guitar music from my archives. I have categorized the music as 'Ambient' because I am often
trying to use sound to create a whole new atmosphere and environment.
I doubt that what I am doing will ever have much in the way of
broad or popular appeal, but I think it does provide an excellent
example of the way in which digital processes and technology
can enable the expression of an artistic vision that is quite
organic in form. Gerald O'Connell 15 St. Mary Road London, E17 9RG United Kingdom wwweb: http://www.wonderport.com/TCF/index.htm |