One of the joys (or horrors) of composing without any particular brief is the complete freedom to set your own.
For instance, late last week I decided I’d like to produce something with a Boards of Canada vibe. If you’re not aware of their work, the ‘Boards’ (as no one called them) were a Scottish electronic duo from the late 90s to early 2000s, who just happened to be brothers (there’s a lot of that in electronic music. I have no idea why).
They’re among the godfathers of ambient music and I remember being a big fan of their album “The Campfire Headphase”.
The style was a sort of woozy, moody and downtempo electronica designed to be a soundtrack to 70’s or 80’s public information films - Charley Says, anyone? In fact, their name came from The National Film Board of Canada which produced that sort of thing for our moose-friendly friends. It was all very haunting, with lots of tape noise and mysteriously named tracks like ‘Turquoise Hexagon Sun’.
So, as a homage to both their music and naming style, here’s ‘Family Unit Lullaby’ - a piece of downtempo electronica with an added - slightly dreamlike, parallel universe - video warning of letting your over-sugared kids play with fireworks. Very much a slice of public information, I’d say.
Interested in the tech of all this? There’s a scoop of old skool Juno synths via the Arturia X plugins, but also some granular synthesis using the Tapes 01 plugin. For those unaware of the phrase, granular synthesis is taking small chunks of sounds and morphing them into something new. It’s good, hearty fun for the sound geek and you can get some really surprising results.
Anyway, onto the next self-made brief. But, if you’ve got any ideas, drop me a comment (and do subscribe!). No country and western, please. Not in my wheelhouse.
Family Unit Lullaby.