Hydro

In August 2021 I played the title track live at the opening ceremony of Reading Hydro, an amazing community project that has built a hydro-electric power plant on the Thames at Reading. It's a long form ambient piece that burbled around in the background while the team and local dignitaries sipped bubbly and rightly congratulated themselves.

Dry Run is my practice session recorded in the studio about a week earlier. It's quite different; on the day I had to use less of the watery effects as they were losing in the battle with the weir thundering away beside me. Maybe more significant was a shift to a brighter sound palette - it was after all a very happy day.

The music is based around long loops, many recorded around View Island where the Hydro is located. These are mixed and mangled and combined with some synthesized sounds all coming from a single Eurorack case.

I'm never sure how the world will respond to long ambient tracks like this so I'm putting it out there as cheaply as I can. Let me know what you think of it - then I can say I was testing the water (ha!).