Starfield Studio Snapshots
Starfield Studio Snapshots released September 2020. A celebration of some of the creative high points in the life of Starfield Studios.
Dance to the Future has the 80`s stamp to its feel with the use of the Korg Wavestation synth
noticeably present in the backing. The song was the vision of Jon Crosse – a longstanding friend, artist and DJ. The lyrics still sound relevant and fresh today.
Drone`s Eye View was originally written to accompany a Rumi poem read by Mike Booth in the Lemurian Ditties project, but here presented as an instrumental.
From the album Drums on Fire with Sivamani, A Drop in the Bucket was remixed by myself and a lady from Carbon Records known enigmatically as JJ. Hence with myself this became the Triple J remix. Sivamani is a remarkable phenomenon as charismatic maestro performer, spectacular musician, and bubbly innovative artist. I feel very honoured to have collaborated with him.
Two songs written with my talented writer/friend Simon Power follow sung by the excellent singer Patrice Paris. They very much have the flavour of their time, early 90’s.
Tom Fairbairn is an excellent violinist (and bassplayer, writer, amazing live sound engineer etc). He joined me for this Celtic flavoured instrumental – Jaberica. We played together in a ceilidh band called Moondance.
Rising was written around the time I appeared with the dancer Francesca Lilith Miceli in a music festival event in St Barts organised by the irrepressible Boubou Les Graniers, what a fun event!
The two remixes of Pemulwuy came about within a couple of years after Feet in the Soil was enjoying success after its release in 1995. I became intrigued by the idea of how a DJ could put a really fresh spin on musical ideas and recordings. After completing Tigers of the Raj, I commissioned a whole album of remixes of the material I had spent so long on, and this was released as Tigers of the Remix. Songs can certainly enjoy a whole second life in this process. It’s expansive to learn how other people hear things and what they can bring to the party!
Tribal Return was an instrumental where I was enjoying including world music influences, but did not immediately fit neatly into any category. This is true for many great ideas. Tagging is designed for computers, not musicians!
Lock and Key was a song executed with Brian Taylor, who wrote it. This song, engineered by Fraser Henry was executed shortly before Fraser and I accepted an invitation from Ritchie, an English artist who had achieved massive success in Brazil, to go there and help record his third album.
La Valse Aspirine and Trigger Happy are two ebullient and nutty instrumentals I put together. Again a bit hard to know how you would successfully categorise them, but fun anyway.
And finally the instrumental version of the Dance to the Future song with Jon-X. The characterful quality of the music made me feel these tracks should all have a life of their own, so here they are.