Doom Song

This is my latest track. When I started it, the plan was to create something using only piano sounds. It worked for a while and I used various notes and arrangements and layered effects over the top. But then I got bored and that's when the whole piano experiment went out the window. The result is something darker than I intended, but that seems to be a reoccurring theme with me. Overall I think it's eerily pretty. I hope you enjoy it...

Women I love: Part three

Billie Holiday

I think I'm pretty lucky. Growing up, my house was always full of music. Sunday mornings I'd wake up to the symphonies of Tchaikovsky or the crooning of Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole. After school we might listen to Glenn Miller or Louis Armstrong, and Carole King was always good for a Saturday afternoon. If my mum ever got to the stereo first, it would usually be a musical, maybe Cats or Oklahoma, and my dad has always been a big jazz fan. I always got to pick what we would listen to at dinner, and more often than not it was Billie Holiday. 

Billie had a truly unique and moving voice. She sang with such emotion, you can't help but hear the pain and sadness in her voice. It's a singing voice tinged with sweetness and vulnerability. And it is powerfully honest. Listening to her as a kid stirred a lot of feelings in me that I didn't quite understand. She made me feel happy and sad all at the same time. When I got a little older I felt bad for her, but I also felt her strength and I found that empowering. The first time I had my heart broken, I listened to Billie all day and night and cried. After a while I felt better, stronger and I knew that I wasn't going to die. That's the first time I think I really understood how her voice made me feel.

Billie was truly a gifted vocalist in the way that she could inspire such powerful empathy. I think she was amazing and is definitely one of my biggest influences (what? You can't hear that in my music?!)  

Today is Tomorrow's Yesterday

I've been listening to a lot of Concrete Blonde lately and one song that really gets to me is their cover of Andy Prieboy's 'Tomorrow Wendy'. It's beautiful, soulful and tragic. I sampled it in my latest track, which aside from the powerful riff borrows nothing else from the song. The mood, style and feeling of my track is completely different. It's sort of a subtle nod to 'Tomorrow Wendy', without any attempt to capture its essence. Listen to both and see what you think....