Ammonite's Light

Good evening.

I don't really know what I'm doing here today. I haven't been feeling too good of late, quite down and out. I felt that I needed to channel something to get me focused, so I thought I'd tell you about one of my numbers. Hopefully, it'll give me a kick to try and get some work done on it.

For those few madmen who've read every entry of this 'ere blog thing might recognise the name Ammonite Song. I've been writing it for nearly the past four years now, and I reckon I know exactly what to do with it, so I thought I'd shed some light onto it. I wanted to take the listener on a journey, starting on the ocean surface, then following light battling through eiderdown-like cloud through the water, down to the deep depths, through history and time, and then washing back up on the shore, with a relic souvenir of what once was.

That's one way of putting it. It's a song about time and memory, using ammonites and fossils as a symbol for that. It delivers a message of no matter what you lose to the world, something is always left behind somewhere, somehow.

I hope it will, anyway. If only I could finish writing the bloody thing. I need to revise my lyrics, smarten them up a bit, give them a trim, etc. The music's fine, with instrumentation and organisation the next big step to look at. Although they may sound rather nice and sparkly, I don't want to include many (if any) synth pads. I'd rather create my own sounds and textures using stuff like organs, pianos and electronic variations of, lead analogue sounding synthesisers... Hey, if no-one had a problem with it in 1975, why should I now? I fully intend for it to sound modern though, don't panic. No lo-fi for me, thank you very much.

I think it'll be about seven or eight minutes in length. I'm using the template of two thirty minute 'sides' (like the good old vinyl days) to limit myself for this first album project. I love the idea of having the album divided into two parts with a break in the middle. Much more, shall we say, theatrical than an hour and a half of continuous music. I think it gives an album much more form and identity. The Dark Side Of The Moon is probably the best example of this - one distinctive piece of work with two definite sides to it.

I think this all sounds like the collected ramblings of an idiot, but maybe it makes some sense as to what I've got planned for something that will hopefully take more shape over the Summer. I know what I'm on about. I actually think it's going to be a killer tune.

If you want the ten-or-so minutes that it took you to read this back, then sod off. What am I, the guarantee of quality time? I listen to Prog, I know how to waste someone's time definitively!