Impressions of a Day - 1st Movement

Written and Recorded in 1990

This is the 1st Movement of my conceptual composition titled Impressions of a Day.
This composition is consistently written under a principle that each Movement basically accommodates three different ingredients, and the same principle is applied to this 1st Movement as well.

This Movement is all about the beginning of a day. The first ingredient provides the main theme of the entire work with fully fledged orchestral arrangement played by the analogue synthesizer, which signifies simply dawning of the day. When this solemn theme ends at around 1:35, the second ingredient comes in and takes over the scene. This short ingredient accompanied by the acoustic guitar signifies the waking up of the protagonist, who begins his day by having a cup of coffee and a fag. While he's in such a drowsy state of mind, from around 2:08, his nightmare comes back to haunt him, which is the third ingredient of this Movement.

Due to the nature of the 1st Movement, themes featured here will be repeatedly played in different arrangements in the following Movements. To cut a long story short, the entire composition begins with the theme of dawning and goes through a whole day until it finally finds itself seeing the dawning on the next morning.

Got to Say Goodbye Blues

Written and Recorded in 1991

In the autumn of 1991, I started an attempt to make a series of 'deliberately unfinished' recording materials and this track was its second attempt. The basic idea here was to initially record the guitar part without using any accompaniment for time keeping purpose, then to add the bass guitar part for making the structure and the framework of the entire recording more conceivable. I also wrote lyrics in the form of the 12-bar-blues and recorded the voice parts, which also featured mouth percussion function, and additional sound effects but, what is presented here consists of genuinely instrumental music sections.

As for the key motivation for making such attempts, I have to confess that I was in a weird state of mind that made me intending to fake my own death. Also, in terms of music, I was interested in some examples of posthumous recordings by the surviving members of The Doors made for furnishing the voice of Jim Morrison in 1978 and/or the backing track recorded by The Soft Machine in 1969, topping on pre-recorded tracks of guitar and voices by Syd Barrett. Anyway, regardless to my original intentions at that time, what you can get from this new remix is nothing but the same old blues.

Impressions of a Day - 2nd Movement

Written and Recorded in 1990

This is the 2nd Movement of my conceptual composition titled Impressions of a Day.
This composition is consistently written under a principle that each Movement basically accommodates three different ingredients, and the same principle is applied to this 2nd Movement as well.

The first ingredient of this Movement is about starting off a day. The protagonist goes out in the morning and becomes a part of a busy crowd of commuters, who are all rushing for catching public transports to start their social lives. Such kind of fresh and mint feeling felt in the morning doesn't last long for the protagonist who, as soon as he arrives at a building, has to get on a lift for going up or down the floors. This second ingredient - mainly played by the acoustic guitar and the rhythm machine - is meant to describe the rest of the morning he spends in his workplace or any other sort of duties. Obviously, the mood is stressful and unpleasant. The way out from such a circumstance follows as the third ingredient, which leads the protagonist to somewhere he can have a relaxing lunch break, at the same time, somewhere he can regain the time for being himself. For these reasons, the music comes back to the main theme initially presented in the 1st Movement, with a more relaxed arrangement.

Secret Jewellery Box (Part Three)

Written in 1991 and 1996 / Recorded in 2000

This piece was supposed to be the Part Three of a long composition called Secret Jewellery Box, a re-working of my old stuff under the same title I had written in 1991. The re-working never completed and this piece was the latest recording I made before the entire scheme was abandoned.

Following a couple of relatively aggressive Parts, this one was designed to cool down a bit within the whole structure of the composition. The ending piece here, which was meant as a bridging piece to the next Part, was neither taken from the original work nor was newly written but a variation from another past work from mine called Jump Up. Additionally, I have no recollection over why I ceased to create further Parts except for the Ending Piece, and abruptly ended to work on this recording scheme at here.

Impressions of a Day - 3rd Movement

Written and Recorded in 1990

This is the 3rd Movement of my conceptual composition titled Impressions of a Day.
This composition is consistently written under a principle that each Movement basically accommodates three different ingredients, and the same principle is applied to this 3rd Movement as well.

The 3rd Movement is meant to depict the protagonist's daytime activities in a busy city. In the first half of this tune, he is supposed to take a train journey required from his personal or business duty. Tension and nervousness increase within his mind being confined in a train carriage and stopping at each station also irritates him. Such intimidated feeling of confinement develops into the recurrence of his dark emotion at around 1:50, where the lead guitar begins to play the theme of this second. The climax of this terrible anxiety comes at around 2:54, where the train plunge into the darkness of a tunnel. The composer is not sure what happened to the protagonist in this third ingredient after the rhythm machine leaves the ensemble in a state of chaos. He might have lost his control or might he has found a way out from the darkness? Who knows? That's where the 3rd Movement ends.

Words Can't Describe (from 'Music for a Story-Telling')

Written in 1991 and 1995 / Recorded in 1995 and 2013

Basically, as far as the music concerns, my conceptual work titled Music for a Story-Telling is a collection of re-workings of my past compositions written in 1991; either works I wrote for a band that couldn't exist long enough to perform it, and/or works for a students’ theatrical project called Zone. This tune is solely based on a theme tune originally written for the latter occasion.

Despite the difference in arrangement, basically this track has a reprise function of  Departure, a track placed earlier in the conceptual work.  Both tracks are mainly attributed to accommodate a character called Suetree, the Poet, to reveal his inner thoughts; whilst Departure features another character Kelp, the Intruder, Words Can't Describe solely consists of Suetree's subjective monologue. The Poet's mood here is blue, so is the arrangement of the same chord progression of the Poet's theme, which I originally wrote for the said students' project.

As for re-writing of this tune, it took place after I had once finished working on the demo version of conceptual work sometime in 1994. At that time, I thought the work was completed, however, since the recording of its band version was still going on, so was the reviewing of the entire work, which made me decide to make some changes and one of which was to additionally write this tune as a replacement of the closing track for the Part Two. As for inspirations for writing this tune, I have no reason to deny I owed to the influence from Al Kooper's some brass rock stuff and to awkward thoughts and fantasies revealed from one of my ex-girlfriends.

In making this video, I newly added some extra parts to the original recording and inserted related footage from the students' performance, captured live in December 1991.