String Quartet VII

January drags on, and while 2014 so far feels and looks like a complete dog's dinner there is still no reason to stop, like... creating shit.

So here's some shit nice music, cooked up over the last month in response to Sid Smith's challenge to come up with something suitable to accompany his ongoing 'String Quartet' series of photographs.

Each set of four is of the window in his study where he writes his 'Postcards From The Yellow Room' blog, as well as writing all that stuff about music etc.

I held off volunteering for a day or two, but when I returned to the idea I found that number VII was one of the sets left, and being essentially grey and ostensibly abstract, it immediately appealed to me: a man who likes both grey and abstraction (which is a pretty good way of describing my mushy music, really).

These are the four pieces, composed entirely on guitar with additional radio noise and even a musical box mechanism (that played The Internationale, of all things). Like a lot of my recent 'work' most of the music is based on the notion of layering and then using the original ideas as a basis of something new. A little like old-fashioned ironmongery where a sword would be composed of layers of steel folded again and again, quite often the original material becomes transmuted by sheer overwork. Anyway, I think that with these four pieces I've at least approached an honesty of intent that adds a certain je ne sais quois.

Prepare to enter the grey room...