Celestium Blog : 002

Welcome to my second ever blog, in which I will summarize the making of my 9th studio album "Absolutely Unacceptable How Dare You".

In autumn of 2023 my studio was a dusty mess of old technology and unloved synths. A good friend of mine was visiting and he said "can we get all this stuff working? I love shit like this" ... and so we began to evaluate what was working and what wasn't.

Out went the 25 year old 486 computer that had Windows 98, Logic Audio Silver and SoundForge on it. I bought Ableton and installed in on my laptop. An even older Alesis mixing desk also failed to come alive, and so I bought the very brilliant Mackie Onyx 16, which can also record to an SD card. The once brilliant Spirit Absolute 2 monitors sounded muddy and unusable, and so I replaced them with the stunning Adams Audio T8V's. The display on one of my synthesizers (Roland 505) was no longer working, so I bought a generic replacement and replaced it with the help of a 30-minute YouTube video.

first impressions of Ableton was that it was utterly daunting and bewildering. The 990-page manual didn't suit my autistic brain at all. Searching for help on YouTube I came across people talking about an online course on a website called Udemy by a guy called Tomas George. I paid for the course and began working my way through 35 hours of learning material. I was so straightforward as he just shows you how to do everything.

As part of the learning process I began to create my first ever Live Set, which although fairly unlistenable, did contain elements of the title track of the album.

I also bought a couple of Midi controllers (Novation LaunchControl XL and SubZero MiniPad) and taught myself how to midi-map my hardware synths (Roland 909, Roland 505

On the summer solstice of 2024 I began work on a new Live Set which eventually became "Faith Versus Fossils". I'd learned enough to begin composing, and I began to feel once again the creative freedom I'd previously known with Logic Audio, and Cubase before that. I revisited this early composition almost a year later with the benefit of all subsequent Ableton learning, and reworked it extensively to produce the final album version. 

The second piece for the album was "A.I A.I. Oh" which I absolutely loved building, day after day, and which gave rise to the initial thoughts I should make some kind of statement about global issues, and some of the frankly terrifying problems facing humans and the natural world. The theme snowballed in subsequent months, and it became clear I was writing a protest album, my rant / plea / passion for our most incredible planet and how we have trashed it for our own selfish needs.

The third piece was initially called "buddhisty" now "Meditate Don't Medicate (part 1 Tibet)". I'd loved drum n bass for years but I'd never thought to have a go ... and I've had a life-changing journey of personal transformation thanks to Buddhism which began over 20 years during a stay at Samye Ling Monastery ... possibly a future blog?? I'd always thought that Buddhist chanting is one of the most incredible sounds that humans can make, and one day I randomly thought "I wonder what it'd sound like on a drum n bass track. Now I know.

The next piece was the logical next step, to explore my love of Indian music, giving rise to "Meditate Don't Medicate (part 2 India)". It came together very easily, and I finished the initial track within a week. Most of the other tracks have take 4-6 weeks, and by that I mean 40-60 hours a week in the studio. I wanted to combine traditional Indian music with trancey techno, and whilst the early version was fun, it was too short and too different to what I was aiming for. By luck I heard of and downloaded a free plug-in virtual synth called Acid Synth, and my first experimentations with it are clearly audible on the track. Also by chance I also heard a beautiful solo by Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia playing an Indian flute called a Bansuri. I discovered that Ableton has an excellent Bansuri sample set, and I decided to insert the mid section of the piece which features my interpretation of Mr. Chaurasia's solo.

No "protest album" would be complete without a comment on Donald Trump, as he campaigned for and then won a second presidency. And so the fifth piece for the album was born. "Drill Baby Drill" took ages to complete, probably two months ... the most complicated process, trying ideas, being brave enough to delete days of work, and taking the time to find spoken samples that summarize my opinion of Trump's USA. Although Donald doesn't come out of it well, he said those things, in public, not me ... and some of the samples of him speaking never made it into the piece. It also turns out that Mr. Trump says the word "what" very rarely, and when he does it's spoken very quickly. Finally after 8 hours of searching I found a slightly longer version, but still had to extend it by about 50% by hand-warping it at a very fine level. Sorry Donald, but you're a very controversial person so how can a piece of music about you be anything else.

The sixth composition was "The Largest Machine In The World" which is an exploration of several things/themes I wanted to include on the album. It's essentially a comment on human civilization being a huge machine, with people being cogs, everyone doing a tiny bit to make the whole thing work. And when I say "work" I mean lurch on producing more stuff for us to buy and consume, and leaving a trail of destruction behind. I'd also discovered some sound recordings produced by particles being accelerated around the 27-kilometre circular tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. It's such a wonderful sound I just had to include it on the album somewhere. And of course electronic music is generated by the most wonderful instruments on the planet, synthesizers, and the piece is quite definitely a homage to how rave culture transformed my life and the lives of many others, specifically the iconic Roland TB-303 which gave birth to that amazing acid sound. I don't own a 303, so I've recreated it's sheer power by running four Acid Synths at once during the track.

Next I revisited my first ever Live Set and absolutely butchered it. This provided the beginnings of the title track "Absolutely Unacceptable How Dare You". It took to most time of any track to complete, almost ten weeks, and I could have carried on tweaking it forever I think. There's so many different elements to it, it took forever to get them as balanced as they are. But I'm happy with the final version, even though it isn't perfect. I accept it's an absolute rant, but hey the world needs it.

The eight piece to compose was "Pathetic Microconsumerist Bollocks" which came together in a wonderfully meant-to-be way. The first day went from blank Live Set to having the first 90 seconds or so nailed. The samples warped into place with relative ease. Although NONE of the sample warping on the album uses Ableton's automatic warping. I've done every syllable by hand, and yes it took many hours.

The last piece "Pseudodemocracy" also came together very organically and naturally. By now I'd spent almost a year in the studio, and had learned new things about Ableton every single day. It was the piece where I was most able to think "I want it to sound like this ..." and I knew how to do it. It was the "last" piece for the album only because I'd kept track of how long all the other pieces were, knowing that a CD can hold up to 69 minutes of music.

So began the final mastering, which took several weeks, listening to the tracks on different sound systems - the stereo systems in my living room, bedroom, bathroom and studio ... and on several bluetooth speakers and on my car stereo. Finally I had nine pieces I was happy with.

Deciding which order they should play on the album was a fun afternoon. I fairly quickly decided "Pathetic Microconsumerist Bollocks" should be first due to it's minute-long intro. It also seemed logical to end the album with "Absolutely Unacceptable How Dare You" because it's a great long rant and nothing could really go after it. It was a lovely coincidence that this led to birdsong starting and ending the album. I realized I had three pieces that kind of went together in a meditational / spiritual sense, so the two "Meditate Don't Medicates" seemed to naturally sandwich "Faith Versus Fossils" for the middle three tracks. The other tracks fell into place simply by listening to the starts and ends and thinking how would this sound after this, and so on.

I created all the album artwork myself, and began several months before the music was finished. It became a relaxing morning thing to do, rather than subjecting my brain to banging techno early in the day. I asked a number of AI websites very specific questions to generate lots of images. It turns out that all AI's seem to have great difficulty spelling, and most of the protest placards were mis-spelled. I had to carefully photoshop most of them, or ditch the ones I couldn't. I asked AI to replace some of the faces with mine and also those of a few of my close friends. I also used Paint and Canva extensively to produce the final artwork.

I sent all the music and artwork off to the record company Electric Salad on summer solstice 2025, a year to the day after I'd first began the album. It was a momentous feeling. Done. Gone. Finished. My deep dive finally over. I'm so proud of it. It's just what I hoped and wanted to produce.