Cover reveal time! Here is my artwork for Alice Sabo’s latest offering, Defiant Endurance, which follows on from last year’s Station Down. It’s hitting ebook retailers now, with paperback to follow…
New cover art: Defiant Endurance
Category: News
Tricks of the Light – streaming now
My new album Tricks of the Light, is now available across popular streaming platforms including Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, Deezer and Amazon Music.
I hope you enjoy the album… please help spread the word by streaming and sharing!
Tricks of the Light – out now!
My new electronic instrumental album, Tricks of the Light is now available as a digital download on Bandcamp. The album will hit streaming services next week.
After working on this project on and off over the past 18 months, I’m really happy to see it released into the world today.
Tricks of the Light has had a head start on Bandcamp, the platform I have regarded as the main home for my music since 2011. We’ve been hearing all kinds of concerns over the future of the platform of late, following its recent sale to Songtradr. I certainly hope it will continue to serve us indie artists as it has – and for anyone who has ever bought or enjoyed any of my music, I can’t think you enough.
I’m really happy with Tricks of the Light, which in part, follows on from what I started with Aspects in 2021. I hope you like it.
Tricks of the Light digital pre-order
My new album TRICKS OF THE LIGHT will be released on Bandcamp and streaming services on 24th November.
The genesis of this project was my trip to Iceland in March 2022. Waking up at 3am in a glass lodge and unexpectedy seeing the Aurora Borealis slowly dancing through the night sky was the most extaordinary experience, and one that I was fortunate to photograph. This became the natural choice for the album artwork, having captured that unique moment of nature at its most majestic and mystical.
The album title came to me while walking the streets of Reykjavík. Travel has always been one of the main inspirations to my music, and although a few tracks are directly inspired by that Icelandic experience, it is not a travelogue album throughout. Much of the music builds on what I established with ASPECTS; shades of dark and light, reflective, melancholic moods but an overall optimistic tone, bringing together various different influences.
TRICKS OF THE LIGHT is available now for pre-order (with immediate access to two tracks).
https://thelightdreams.bandcamp.com/album/tricks-of-the-light
Tricks of the Light
The forthcoming album released under my musical pseudonym ‘The Light Dreams,’ will be entitled Tricks of the Light.
It has been a longer and slower process than usual between getting this project into shape and the release of my previous album Aspects, which hit download and streaming services back in February 2022. Much of the inspiration for the new music – including the title – came to me while traveling round Iceland in late March last year. I knew there and then, that majestic trip would eventually feed into my music, resulting in several pieces of music directly inspired by the land of fire and ice. The other tracks in the project are more metaphorical and reflective, building on the same kind of style as Aspects, which has proven to be my most popular release to date. So while the album is part travelogue and part introspective and dreamy, all the tracks sit together nicely.
I created my first demos for Tricks of the Light back in the summer of 2022, but couldn’t get anything going properly. I felt I had made my strongest work to date with Aspects (and the streaming figures are testament to this, at least by my standards), so following that up proved to be challenging. I knew how I wanted things to sound and I knew the kind of direction some of the tracks should go in, but for whatever reason, I just couldn’t get it right. The first few months of 2023 were written off due to a badly slipped disc, and as I discovered, you simply can’t create while you’re in pain or doped up on heavy medication! I was starting to see light at the end of the tunnel by the end of April, and it was then that I composed Binary Star, which kickstarted the whole project and was released as a single in August.
Working on Binary Star led to me going through the 20+ ideas and starting points I had amassed over the past year, and in one instance, even working on an unfinished piece which dated back to 2013. It suddenly became clear which ideas had potential and were ready to be developed further. Eight tracks soon became ten, and I’m now in the final stages of refining the mixes and also starting think about cover art. Making music is never something that can be forced, and like any form of creativity, when the time comes, it just flows.
Watch this space…
In the meantime, here are some clips of some of the work-in-progress:
Binary Star
A brand new track, Binary Star has been released as a digital single today. This is my first new music in over 18 months and the first taste of my current album-in-progress.
You can stream Binary Star on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and SoundCloud.
The Time Scales interview
I recently discussed Evolution of the Toy Dalek and making music with The Time Scales podcast in California. They asked if they could use some of my music in the video rather than the standard tracks, so I was of course, more than happy to oblige!
Castors on standby!
Trundle your browsers over to YouTube this evening at 8pm UK time, where I will be chatting to the excellent Type 40 Podcast about Evolution of the Toy Dalek.
Evolution of the Toy Dalek – out now
My new digital publication – Evolution of the Toy Dalek – is now available to download for free. I’ve always wanted to do some kind of project around everybody’s favourite pepper pots, and this is it! It surprises me, given how many Doctor Who and merchandise books we’ve seen, that nobody has ever produced something purely about the most popular collectable of them all… well, now we have it. I hope you like it.
sevenzeronet.wordpress.com/ebooks/
New site section: AI Artwork
I have added a new section to the website on AI artwork. Check it out here.
The Light Dreams 