ON THE SURFACE : A BRIEF HISTORY
I would make a liar out of myself if I were to tell you that Brian Eno's AMBIENT series had nothing to do with influencing the creation of ON THE SURFACE. I had only gotten into Eno's ambient music about two years ago starting with AMBIENT 1: MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS. Purchased on thick vinyl I was fascinated with music you be with rather than listen to. Sounds that actually BECAME the enviornment around you. It wasn't until I purchased AMBIENT 4 : ON LAND that I decided to conceptualize and write an entire album in my then East Village apartment in the course of one rainy Sunday. I had set up my eight track and a Yamaha keyboard and wrote the album on the spot and totally improvised. Nothing was written down. No arrangements were made. No studio costs were incurred. It was, as Brian Eno stated in a lecture about Ambient 1, very cheap music. And I see now what he meant by that statement because it is all about the enviornment you create from the sounds you are layering on top of one another to create an aural concept rather than the arrangements or melodies of the actual compositions using. And through these simple techniques and equipment some very interesting sounds start to pop up out of no where.
Originally I completed this album as tiny snippets of my daily routine and the tracks seemed to represent specific moments in my day. For example, 1:touchdown was originally called MORNING BELLS and was to represent when I woke up in the morning and got ready for my day at work. The bells were to represent those of a nearby church that would bring me out of slumber on occasion. But as I listened to the songs more clearly, I heard a different story being told and it definitely had nothing to do with such earthly simplicities as waking up and going to work. No, this album represented something vast and unexplored. The tale I now heard was that of a mission through time and space to some unknown planet and now everytime I listen to it as a whole the story makes more and more sense. During this time period, I also started follow the CASSINI-HUYGENS mission to the planet TITAN and the concept of the recording then really started to shift. The basic premise started to form in my head: "What would a manned mission to TITAN sound like?"
Two years after those basic tracks were recorded I have finally completed my first ambient album through the wonders of my laptop.
The first journey is done.
Let the second take us away even further.
Dennis Cahlo
May 2006
