I am currently finishing off a new as yet untitled album. The tracks have coalesced around a line up of soprano sax, bass clarinet, bass, piano, cello, tuned and untuned percussion with the odd bit of kora, concertina and other bits thrown in for good measure. The music is different to the material I was working on for the last album Music From A Drowned World and is something I am far happier with.

I moved away from a strings oriented sound to one dominated by wind and there are also less glassisms and reichisms around. Harmonically and melodically the pieces tend to be modal and although they draw to some extent on folk and jazz music the pieces certainly don’t develop along variations of the traditional II, V, I jazz progressions.

Initially I had lots of tuned percussion banging away but those pieces have slowly been given the push. The tracks below are nowhere near finished and in fact didn’t find their way onto the album. The extracts here are from early run throughs in preparation for final recording. So just a few teasers that are not really representative of where the project is at the moment but it should be finished in the next couple of weeks.

I will post something about the making of the album as I get the time.

A rough intro to a track that didn’t make it onto the album in the end but hopefully you can hear where it was going.

A rough early extract from a track as it was being written but has since been completely reworked.

A quick 20 secs of another track that didn’t make it onto the album.