Speaking of the music for a change, I feel the first impression of The Difference Engine may deceive. Granted, the lack of familiar parameters serving as orientation points is perhaps irritating at first glance. However the perception of micro-details comes with repeated listening and co-incides with a certain degree of addiction to recreating the imaginary scenery. Imagine this process as one’s eyes adjusting to the darkness after having been exposed to a bright light source and close your eyes. Each of the four songs provide a different quality of darkness, and they do not wear thin even after having been added to a playlist for weeks.

The cover makes use of an unusual amount of red. The colour even dominates the entire canvas, which has more similarity to a pattern than a composition. If red translates to dissonance and the pattern with the degree of abstraction, it may even seem a plausible explanation. Since I’m only reflecting by the time the work has already been completed, not whilst creating it, I cannot really claim there was a master plan. Rarely is there such a thing as strategic calculation, it just happens and if the draft matches the music, it will be used. It might have looked differently on another day, with another mood or under different circumstances. Adjust your interpretation as you see fit for it.

The cover art was another cooperation with Marco Cervellin: As so often, Marco came up with a draft he didn’t mean to use ;-) and I was more convinced of than the actual main drafts he prepared. After having worked this version out the remaining things came up pretty fast. Maciej’s photo suggestions for the cover were gladly accepted by us because they fit the mood we had in mind.

The cover art was once again done by Synflict (aka. Marco and me) and required a lot of fine tuning with major changes even occuring in the final drafts. Though some ideas were present from the beginning, progress was rather slow and at some point, the front draft was even close to being abandoned altogether. This seems strange, because the artwork does not look like being the product of fierce struggling.

More releases are coming during the next weeks and I hope to be able to devote more time to updating my site, too.

Amacelin & Luyelval

Ellos se mueven al igual que los electrones
grabando los eternos caracteres
sobre los interminables muros invisibles.

Luego ellos me hablaron al oído
y me contaron acerca de todo lo que existe al otro lado de los muros
revelándome la existencia de los 9 portales de fuego
que nos conducen a los 4 mundos eternos.

Not everyone is fluent in Spanish (neither am I, mind you), so I thought it might be useful to add an inofficial English translation :

Amacelin & Luyelval

They are moving like electrons
writing down eternal characters
on endless invisible walls.

Then they whispered into my ear
and told me about everything there is on the other side of the walls
revealed the existence of nine gates of fire
which lead us to four eternal worlds.

I’m not sure whether this is an accurate translation, but if not, someone will eventually let me know ;-)

Chilean composer René Muñoz Córdova combines in electroacoustic abstraction with isolated elements from more conventional music genres: Field recordings, vocoder and speech synthesis voices, patches of strings, computer generated sounds, feedback or deconstructed samples of real instruments. In Obras Musicales an aural universe is created where dissonance and harmony can peacefully coexist.

source: petcord site

Apart from the music, Obras Musicales is also interesting, because it features Marco and me in our first appearance as Synflict, a project focusing on netlabel related design and artwork needs. Consequently, the artwork is more lavish than usual, featuring a folded front sheet that also contains lyrics and an inlet for the back of a CD case (requires disassembling of the latter, but is rewarded with a self made CD that can be found quickly on a shelf).

The liner notes already provide a summary of the music, so there is no need to add redundency in this post ;-)

It shares some characteristics with Drone, but clearly differs by its lack of inertia and repetition. An alternative approach may be to classify it as Dark Ambient, which again is conflicting with the abstract harmonies which rather bring up associations of crystalline space rather than misty vaults and feelings of distress. The treatment of space and dynamics in Slow Movements also hints at electroacoustic, as is the generative character of the music.

(Source: Release liner notes)

The work gains with repeated listening and interestingly even difficult to understand passages eventually resolve into more than listenable music. I suspect perhaps it is a bit like the eyes’ adjustment to darkness. In the beginning you do not see a lot but after a few minutes, a lot of contures and details start to turn up from the seemingly uniform mass.

There is an ambiguity concerning Slow Movements in that it both refers to interconnected units that define a whole (sometimes returning to previous patterns) and the infinity of variations that neither know a beginning nor an ending. And thus tracks are not remembered and recognised by phrases but instead by their character as a whole.

(Source: Release liner notes)

This is much like listening to a blackbird’s song: You cannot exactly determine a beginning or end, just a constant movement. However, you can immediately identify its characteristics, despite the fact that there is constant variation in its phrases.

The cover art was another cooperation between Marco Cervellin (of Wacky Southern Current fame) and me. The initial idea was a sequence of butterfly movements, which quickly inspired me to build the remaining scenery around it. Some time was spent on improving details and applying requested changes, until both we and Fabio Keiner were satisfied with the result.