The Tempest by 4-D Traveller
An album that almost didn't make it. What if Roger Corman had made a movie of Shakespeare's play 'The Tempest'? What would the soundtrack be like? These are the kind of ridiculous hypothetical questions that float through my mind, and a few years ago I over-ambitiously attempted to make just such an album reality. Throw into the mix a Jupiter-4 in its death throes, a deep dark Dresden winter, some long nights of the soul and my trusty TEAC cassette recorder and you have some of the ingredients for what transpired. Mostly created live with a few parts overdubbed played by hand, this is a lo-fi odyssey of medieval magic, a mysterious island, strange beasts, betrayal, revenge, redemption and a sorcerer's desire to return to the civilisation from which he was exiled. Hot valves, magnetic tape, analogue synths and a selection of string machines, organs and a mellotron provide the vehicles for the journey.
The story of making it felt at times like a Shakespearian tragic epic in itself. My small children were in and out of hospital all winter, struck by the full force of the "Tripledemic" that swept through the Kindergartens following the Covid lockdowns of the previous year, and the emotional weight of it all got too much to bear. I was fighting the broken Jupiter-4, fighting depression, fighting the cold dark Dresden winter nights, a slew of technical problems, and basically fighting myself to simply keep hanging on. So I left everything where it was, exhausted and overwhelmed. Abandoned, the tapes gathered dust, with me having little appetite to re-open that difficult artistic endeavour and hard chapter of my life's experiences. I got on with other simpler projects in the meantime, and slowly life returned to some semblance of whatever normality usually is. But now this almost-lost and forgotten work rises creaking and cranking once again from its electric grave! I dared to listen again recently and was pleasantly surprised - it seemed that the album was much more finished than I'd realised at the time. All I had to do was accept it for what it was in all its rough and raw glory, and let it speak for itself. The tapes are dusted off, tidied up a bit and presented to you here. Proggy funky dirty DIY synth-punk Berlin-School insanity awaits the intrepid listener!
Digital is free but please support the underground and chuck any spare change my way if you can, it's all very much appreciated!
Some of the gear used:
Roland Jupiter-4
Arp 2600
Korg MS-20
Moog Subsequent 25
Mellotron
Fender Stratocaster
- and a host of other synths, keyboards, string machines, organs and pedals...
Tracklist
Credits
Everything by James Penrose.
Recorded at Inner World Studio, Dresden, Winter 2022-23.
For Richie & Otto.
License
All rights reserved.Tags
Dresden-based label, specialising in kosmische, experimental, ambient and space music.