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Lock the Cottage Industry

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2 September 2005

The cottage industry that is Darren Lock Incorporated has been busy producing copies of “Sow’s Ears & Silk Purses” for CDBABY. As the title is soooo popular (well, more popular than the rest of my CDs) I’ve pulled out all the stops and sending off 20 copies. That should keep me in stock for six months or so. 😉
Look…loads of Darren boxsets:

Last week, when we were on a mission to buy door handles, a friendly grasshopper hitched a lift all the way from the Homebase in Harlow to our doorstep in Loughton. He remained on the windscreen for the entire journey and was quite a distraction. I grabbed a container and took this picture of him before letting him go. He was such an attractive specimen I had to get a picture of him. I’m going to add him to my amazing rotating random banners at the top of the screen!

It’s funny because I keep hearing cricket/grasshopper sounds when I stand in the front/back garden. Maybe it is my little green chum???
Yesterday, I received an email from the PR lady who is working for Leo Abrahams thanking me for the nice things I have been saying about his album “Honeytrap”. That was nice. I don’t usually get any thanks, nor acknowledgement. It was nothing really. I’ve been planning to write a proper review of the album because it is really something special and people need to hear about it. Then we’ll give them something to thank me for!

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Sows’ Ears & Silk Purses (2004)

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1 September 2005


Track Listing
4-CD Retrospective (1998-2003)
Well I guess it had to happen eventually…
This is a 4-CD retrospective, which includes the albums “Fade In/Fade Out”, “Heavy on the Magick”, “Loops & Scales”, “Start”, “Touched by the King”, “It’s About Time” as well a whole CD comprising of ambient soundscapes taken from my soundscaper series.
This is over 4 hours of music, so pick up a copy and give it someone you really don’t like! 🙂

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Textures (2003)

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1 September 2005


Track Listing
24 Instrumental Pieces MP3
Textures was recording in a couple of weeks during July and August 2003. This time the remit was a little different: to create a CD of music that was comprised of lots of little bits of music…
My main rule was that the instrumental pieces were to be no longer than 2 minutes in length and if possible they should all slot together.
I am really proud of Textures and I feel that it is my best body of work.

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Soundscaper 3 – Empty Space (2003)

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1 September 2005


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.

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Without Words (2003)

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1 September 2005


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.

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LOAD – If We Lived Here, We’d Be Home Now (2002)

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1 September 2005


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!

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Rhythm Buddies (2001)

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1 September 2005


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”.

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