You are allowed to enjoy this…

Track Listing
1. Contraction
2. Lead Pipe
3 Among the Stars
4. Nest of Vipers
5. Descent of the Fallen I
6. A Hope in the Dark
7. One Brain MP3
8. Descent of the Fallen II
9. Fields of HaSharon MP3
10. Ascension
With every CD I record, comes a companion CD of soundscapes. These ambient noodlings are rather fun to record and aren’t as easy as it looks. All the tracks here are recorded “as live” (i.e. in one take with no overdubs) and what you are hearing is Darren on his own with all his guitar equipment improvising on the spot. Real edge of the seat stuff!
This time around I wanted to go a bit spacey and so I decided to try and record some background music to a science-fiction movie.
It certainly sounds a bit different from the Soundscaper CDs in the series.

Track Listing
1. The Birds
2. Reality Lives on Pleasure
3. Falling Down (Without Words) MP3
4. Mando Marching Major
5. Numbersong
6. Apothesis
7. Shadowsong MP3
8. (intro)
9. Forever Autumn
10. Skysong
11. Back to the Ark
12. Spiralsong
13. Three Piece Suite
14. Make Your Mark
15. Endsong
With the LOAD partnership dissolved in early 2003, I found myself with a number of unfinished tracks that I had prepared for those sessions that were rejected by Andrew.
It were these tracks, “Falling Down”, “Mando” and “Reality Lives on Pleasure” that were the basis of the new CD.
The brief was simple. This was to be the definitive Darren Lock CD. We were going to throw in all the stylistic tricks that I use and see what comes out the other side.
Stand out tracks include, “Reality Lives on Pleasure”, “Numbersong”, “Shadowsong” and “Three Piece Suite”.
To view the videos I made to accompany this CD, click the videos tab to the right of the screen.

Track Listing
1 Broken Atmospheres
2 Reality Lives on Pleasure MP3
3. If We Lived Here, We’d Be Home Now
4. Red Blank, Red Blank
5 Water Finds Its Own Level
6. Distant Village Song
7. Compression Sickness MP3
During 2002, I decided to do something completely different and stop recording on my own. Using the Internet, I hooked up with another guitarist by the name of Andrew Osborne.
Under the name of LOAD (made up from our initials), we recorded an instrumental album using loops and our two very different guitar sounds. Andrew was more of a guitarists’ guitarist and played nylon acoustic and bass, while I was responsible for almost everything else.
The tracks here are rather good and include a Darren Lock composition “Reality Lives on Pleasure” which features an Andrew Osborne middle section and some deliciously rubber bass on “King Arthropod”.
Unfortunately, our partnership was short-lived, as Andrew decided to call it a day on music and to concentrate on having babies!

Track Listing
1. Chinese Whispers
2. Money for Old Rope
3. DreamOut
4. CooHop
5. Ethnic Friction
6. Discipline is a Vehicle for Joy MP3
7. Tone Me Toni
8. I Am Not Your Enemy
9. The Winter Twos
10. Manhole Slop
11. Inferno
If you’ve read this far, you will probably have heard mentioned already the “Rhythm Buddy” loops from Pat Mastelotto. He is the drummer with King Crimson and in mid-2000 put some drum loops on his website with the intention that internet musicians could use them for the basis of their own compositions. I took up the challenge and put for “Rhythm Buddy” inspired tracks over my last two CDs. I thought it would be nice to take the whole idea one step further and put out a whole CD of this material based on those loops. I already had four tracks so it wouldn’t take much to make some more music.
Stand out tracks for me are the murky “CooHop”, the deafening “I Am Not Your Enemy” and the weird rhythms of “Manhole Slop”.

Track Listing
1. Twelve String Dream
2. Attempting Peace
3. Around and Around
4. Outside 1
5. Outside 2
6. Outside 3
This is a direct follow-up to “Soundscaper 1 – Atmospheres” as the recording equipment is the same and the same remit was in place: to capture live performances straight to CD.
The main difference between this and the preceding CD is that three of the tracks were recording in my back garden. It was a beautiful summer and I decided to record outside for a change. I took some equipment into the garden and captured an afternoon’s performance using a Minidisc recorder and a tiny stereo microphone clipped to my guitar lead. These performances were later edited to fit on the CD. It was nice recording with the sound of the bird’s singing, local children playing and the neighbours’ radios. It makes an interesting mix!
I can’t wait to try this again but next time I will mic everything up a bit better. Stand out tracks include “Twelve String Dream” and “Outsider 3” where my experiments with guitar FX pedals cause hilarious results and much laughter from my wife. Who said there was no place for humour in music?

Track Listing
1. In the Fire
2. It’s About Time
3. The Last Straw
4. Big Calm…
5. …With Diamonds
6. By this River
7. DreamOut
8. Scorpion Dance
9. Ragamuffin
10. Spanish Fly MP3
11. The Cocksucker Blues MP3
12. Trumpster
13. Spaced
14. Inferno
The reason this CD is called “It’s About Time” is because it seemed to take me ages to get into my stride when recording this one. It needed to be beaty in places and acoustic in others, there needed to be enough room for ambient soundscapes and crashing electric guitars. I worked long and hard on the drum loops and various ideas but the recording process was rather slow. I became obsessed with perfecting tracks and often rerecorded them from scratch.
For my 30th birthday I was lucky enough to travel to Los Angeles in the good ol’ US of A and I arranged to pick up an Ashbory Bass from a local guitar shop. The Ashbory is a miniature bass instrument with silicon rubber strings and makes the most amazing noise – it sounds like an upright bass. I put it to good use on this CD and you can hear it on “Spaced” and my prog reggae masterpiece “Ragamuffin”.
My personal faves from this collection include “Spanish Fly” and “The Cocksucker Blues”.