ORPHIC ENDEAVORS

What does Orphic Endeavors sound like, anyway?

In an effort to make myself more professional, here's a little more info directly cut and pasted from my weblog. I tend to talk quite a bit about the music and the process there on my weblog than anywhere else. Early yesterday I did that very thing. In case you'd like to know more about the sound of Orphic Endeavors and why I do what I do musically, here's a little bit of info....

Yesterday two copies of "ICON" were packaged up and mailed with two checks, one for $35 to set up the album at CDBaby and the other for $20 to get a barcode. And here's the thing... In just a couple of months... Maybe even next month, I'm going to do it again with "Abandoned Hospital". Hey, this one it IT for me. I can't explain it, but this one is the defining album. This one is going direct to CD and then to CDbaby and then Rhapsody and iTunes and all the other places folks join to listen to and buy music. It is very cinematic, the central theme being a mental image of wandering through an abandoned and decaying hospital, kind of like "Session 9" without the plot or the actors. But the main thing about it... The central thing... The defining thing, is that it goes back to my roots and the reason why I make music in the first place. It's dark ambient. And "dark ambient" is only a breath away from "Metal". It's nearly an abandoned genre. I had to go to "soundtrack" and "film music" as my main genres all over the place because "dark ambient" isn't listed anywhere anymore. (There are a few exceptions by the way. I think I saw it listed at Audiostreet as a genre.) But it's where I got my start and it's the music I listen to the most and love the most. Examples are few and far between, but if you take Depeche Mode for instance, their instrumentals fit the genre perfectly, I think... Examples? Listen to "Easy Tiger" from "Exciter", "Introspectre" from "Playing the Angel", or "Jazz Thieves" from "Ultra" and you'll get the idea. I think a lot of it is now lumped under "game soundtracks", and of course, since the original soundtracks for "Myst" and "Riven" are also direct inspiration for me I have to include those too in the "dark ambient" genre. The other influence is really a specific album by Gary Numan. It was probably his best album and frankly, even though I have all of his albums now, it is the only one I can continue to listen to regularly... There are two versions of it, "Exile" and "Exile Extended". I love them both, but really "Exile Extended" could almost qualify as dark ambient except that there are lyrics. The songs are very long extended versions with lots of periods without lyrics. Very very dark ambient. And one more influence for me is most likely Peter Gabriel's "Birdy" soundtrack. I still have my old cassette of this and it sits right here by my computer. I guess all "dark ambient" really is is ambient music with a dark edge to it. It isn't happy pianos and upbeat melodies... It's a bad dream on a dark and stormy night with a bloody knife and a body in the library kind of thing. And I love it dearly. So, I'm happy to say, "Abandoned Hospital" is pulling from the bottom of the deep black well of my creativity. All the light and airy is removed. No beats are involved. All the sounds are my own and the synths all played by me on my new keyboard. A labor of dark and brooding love, I suppose you could call it. A labor of edginess and disturbing thoughts and dreams.... It's creepy, is the gist of what I'm trying to get at here. Yeah. Creepy.