The coronavirus situation seems to be more settled, simply a matter of waiting. I am ignoring this for the moment and avoiding the news. This makes me far happier. Think how terrifying the Black Death would have been if it had been on television.
I've spent yesterday and today finalising the music for the Animalia remaster, and redesigning the (potential) CD artwork. I'm not sure if I will have any CDs made; I hardly sell any, but having physical items is an incentive to do something with them, it adds value to the artwork itself.
In musical terms, Animalia 2020 is almost identical to the first version, as I had expected, but there have been slight tweaks to most of the tracks. Paragon, the most complex track, has benefitted from louder strings in the chorus and more cleanliness and punch in the bass area. A lot of mixing problems are best solved by reducing or removing bass frequencies, always removing rather than adding or boosting. I keep equalisation to the minimum; in fact, I never use it, I prefer to change the volume and timbre of the instruments themselves rather than process an instrument track, or, shudder, the whole song.
Mantle has had similar, very slight, tweaks. Nectar is one of the few tracks that is audibly different, it's a simple idea: a piano tune played very slowly but with a very strong echo, so that the echoing notes add to the current melody. Over time this builds up to form a dance of notes, rather like a dance of individual bees making up a hive; hence the title. The 2004 version of this track tends to fade out rather quickly though. It is three minutes long, but at least the last minute is silence. For this version I've boosted the feedback to extend the music. This was to be the gentle ending of the album, so drifting into silence isn't all bad; the last track, Cellular Automaton, was sort of a secret bonus track. I've added a little bit more to Cellular Automaton too, an intro which fades in at the end of Nectar. That's it for the music.
The art was a secondary challenge. I had already designed two covers for Animalia. The 2004 album was my first to use an actual painting. I decided to paint it on steel, a 50cm metal plate. Priming it with cheap acrylic primer from The Works made it rust and turn browny pink. So I primed it again, and again it rusted. So, fed up with this, I slapped on a good coat of emulsion paint, perhaps 3mm thick! This stopped the rust seeping through but did give the panel a deeply grooved texture like Rhino skin. I'd only just begun painting in 2004, so learned a lot from that one, but it's an awful painting compared to my current work.
In 2007, I redesigned the cover for a new digital release, but only designed it in 300dpi, and limited pages. My practice now is to design album art in 600dpi, and for an 8-page booklet. The 2007 cover is fine, so I decided to copy that, and I have enough of the source files to recreate it in 600dpi to a good standard, so here it is:
It's almost identical to the 2007 version, but this notably lacks a buzzard in the top left. I could include him, but I think the image balancing works fine as it is, and the are no buzzards in the music (well, there are few gulls either, but they do screech a little in Oceanic). For the inner art, I've used the motif of the hexagons, which I created algorithmically using the fantastic software Genetica (which is sort of like a graphic version of how my music software works on audio).
I've used occasional animals, like the monkey here, and a mix of white and black hexagons.
I'm pleased with this and, as I always was, with the whole album. It is truly in the style of Jean-Michel Jarre's 80s period; albums like Magnetic Fields, Rendez-vous, Zoolook, yet more conceptually focused. Revisiting this over the past few days made me wonder if I should create something similar, perhaps a plant-themed album... could I revisit this ancient style of mine? Also, what would be my incentive?
I feel at the top of my creative powers, that I can create any piece of music, art, poetry, literature, to a good standard, and can choose any of these at will. It's just a matter of time and resources; so, what to create? Something that will have a lasting impression on global culture? Something that future historians will see as reflecting these times? Something deeply touching and personal? Something groundbreaking and that, centuries from now, will be seen as wonderfully as William Blake's work is now?
I doubt anything I do will ever be popular or lucrative, but even if it were, acclaim or money cannot be an artist's motivation, those slippery snakes are never certain. My nature is to do the opposite of what is requested and expected by society. All I really have to do is what I want, what I love, and do that to the best of my ability. That is all we can do.
