Entropy

The tracks on this album are entirely electronic-synthesiser produced, accessible and nothing wildly experimental or difficult to listen to. Much use of mechanical sequencer rhythms is made for general background rhythmic material supporting the melodies, solos and improvisations. Although the style is traditional it’s an album in which I’ve tried to exploit the wide variety of sounds that a range of equipment from vintage, hardware to ultra-modern software synthesisers can produce for the foreground instruments as well as all the background sounds. I enjoyed mixing up instruments from different time periods and I hope it’s effective and enjoyable to listen to.

As the album came together, in a scientific book I was reading the subject of Entropy was discussed and I just thought the word somehow fitted in a odd kind of way to what I was experiencing with the music. The music I felt being entirely electronic also did have a slight feel of science about it.

There is a full res. pdf of the above picture. Click on the credit for Julie Parkinson who kindly created the digital image for me to download it if you wish.

This, my 12th album, unusually is available for now as a free MP3 download as well as a full sound quality CD. You can download it track by track by double clicking on MP3 on each track. The files are numbered as they appear on the CD. I’ve put the files sizes with them to give you an idea of how long it might take to download on your connection. But why is it free and why MP3?....

Since my last release the world of technology has change markedly. After cassettes and LP records, Cds brought a great period of stability with good sound quality. Now the CD is dead. Sales are plummeting everywhere, replaced not by the new wave of high quality DVD-A and super CD formats but by the highly compressed and inferior sounding MP3 download. With cheap pocket players and tinny computer speakers everywhere hi-fi looks also to be dying. Even better download formats like FLAC are possible but not that popular due to at present lengthy download times.
Is it me but I find it really hard to come to terms with MP3 purchases when the buyers only get around 10% of the data they would get buying a CD copy, meaning a whopping 90% is cleverly reconstructed sound? This is a tall order for something as rich and dynamic as music. It’s clever but it’s not that good. With your tiny MP3 download purchase you can also end up buying into some really nasty and quite unfair sales restrictions you maybe didn’t bargain for. You don’t even get a hard copy either or any artwork or booklet. Considering all this, the price for a miserly few megabytes of highly compressed data can seem extraordinarily high for some download purchases. It’s just so damned easy though!

While I’m thinking about long term options like DVD-A or FLAC no loss downloads from my site the temporary plan was to offer this one album logically in MP3 but for free, partially as a bit of MP3 advertising and partially as a thank you to all those people who have supported my music over the years. So far it has proved very popular but of course I’ve found out there are still a few people out there who don’t feel music should be free or like MP3s and are happy to pay for a good quality CD or download. A FLAC version is actually uploaded to my web server which I can make available for interested buyers. I haven’t yet managed to make it easily available on the site. I’m working on it. Also I decided to make a CD available too. I think there might just be enough demand, which is why there are now two sets of buttons on this page.
Of course there is still a donate button above if you would like to help me with costs. It’s an expensive pursuit so anything you think appropriate would be much appreciated. The donate button takes you to Paypal so it’s just as secure with your money as buying a CD.