The Crystal Maze

Written in 1989 / Recorded in 1989 and 2015

My second attempt at writing a twenty-minute length composition, following Life of My Own in the previous year. Unlike the first attempt, in writing and recording this new stuff, I planned carefully to the details before I started recording the first note. As a result, the recording itself went quite smoothly in comparison with the previous attempt but I recognise this later work being more boring than the earlier one. Especially, the mellow section after the brief fugue-like section could have been written or arranged better.

The initial demo was made by May or June in 1989 and was brought to then my band called Timeless to be considered as our repertoire for a concert already set in July. The keyboard/bass player urged to re-work on making the new backing track for the live performance and I agreed to do that. The keyboard parts were mostly replaced with better sounding Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer he possessed at that time and unique ending section was newly written and added. The performance was not bad but this was the first and final performance of this tune.

The basic idea for writing this composition was to present a story of a person who has been wandering in a maze made of crystal - through a long struggle - finally, reaches to a way out from the maze. The crystal is used as a metaphor for signifying something transparent, in other words, the person trapped inside could see through where is the way out in the first place... I tried to build a musical maze based on such planning and probably failed to complete it, I guess.

I have added minor but important missing instruments by taking the opportunity for making the video edition in 2015.