I had a setback today when the power supply on my PC blew up, but I hope this can be fixed within the next week or so … Otherwise work on the new album was going well… I hope to have a track up on soundcloud soon (http://soundcloud.com/northcape). It hasn’t been an easy process getting to this point (see my previous blog), but I’m hoping that I have made a breakthrough in the overall sound and coherence of the album. The album was originally inspired by a classic account of the exploration and discovery of the first route to the Nanda Devi Sanctuary in the Himalaya. This may or may not seem like a promising subject, but it gave a structure to the album, although it has obviously taken it’s own route from there. Apart from anything else I have had a clear sequence of images in my head while composing some of the tracks and although I have never been to the Himalaya I have nevertheless drawn from my own experience when writing the tracks. The album also has a slightly different overall sound from Captured From Static, with more use of distortion. It feels like a logical progression as the sound draws from the Alluvial EP (free!- http://archive.org/details/elpa70) as well as Captured From Static. Currently there are 11 tracks, although it’s possible this may increase. I’m still some way off a release date, but I’ll let you know when there is more news!

The Northcape remake of Mike Allen’s track ‘Sundowner’ is now available for free d/l from Sun Sea Sky. This track was a challenge as it’s not a remix, I wasn’t allowed to use any of the original sounds from the track so it had to be remade from scratch, based on the original. The original is part of quite an intense and dark album in a different style to the music I normally listen to, which made it even more of a challenge, but it was a good experience to work on this and I think the final result does capture something of the feel of the original while still being recognisably ‘Northcape’. I did this a while ago, so it’s not really a clue to the sound of the tracks on the in-progress album (more on that later) but I’m glad it has finally been released. I also recommend the Boc Scadet remake. You can pick up all the remakes from the Bandcamp release page here: http://sunseasky.bandcamp.com/album/sounds-from-home-revisited .

I am currently going through another difficult period in the creation of my own music (in fact, it rarely seems to be easy!). I have ideas, and some good tracks (at least 5 or 6, probably more) that I think deserve to be released and hopefully will be, one way or another. Unfortunately, somehow this collection of tracks doesn’t form the type of coherent whole that is needed to release an album. Some of the ideas come from quite different places from each other, both in terms of sound and inspiration.
I know that some people would argue that doesn’t matter, particularly in the context of the internet, but as I’ve written in a previous blog, I am a big fan of the album format. I still listen almost exclusively to full albums or EPs, and don’t want to give up on the idea of releasing something that builds connections between the different tracks to form something deeper and more complex. This is the real challenge, and I think giving up on doing this would be a step backward for the Northcape project as a whole and not really worthwhile. I think everything that I have previously completed has achieved a coherence across each release to a greater or lesser extent, if not perfectly, and I don’t want to release music just for the sake of getting another entry in the discography.
However for any new album to work, I need not only a strong idea or overall concept, but for the idea to inspire an album structure that makes sense to me, and not only contains tracks that I have already but forms the inspiration for new ones and suggests how they can be arranged. This is very hard, and at the moment, it hasn’t really happened, despite having something that may well be the concept behind the next album. Trying to write tracks in a style to suit tracks that have already been written isn’t really working. Perhaps I need to take a step back from it rather than force the concept too much and potentially put obstacles in the way of producing new music. I am still excited about some of the ideas I have and the possibilities out there, but the precise way forward isn’t completely clear at the moment!

PS: Happy new year and again, thanks for all the support over 2011! If you haven’t got it, you can pick up 2011′s free release ‘Alluvial’ here: http://www.northcapemusic.co.uk/alluvial.html. The album ‘Captured From Static’ is still, of course, available through Sun Sea Sky and a wide range of online retailers.