Tuesday, February 10, 2009

New free EP : Broken Sails

The new EP is here!


It's called "Broken Sails (Life in a Sinking Ship)" and the whole zip with complete CD artwork is HERE
If you liked it, be sure to give me feedback here or by email to khoralnet[nospam]free.fr


Thematically, "Broken Sails" is about XIXth sea travel... not really a concept album, but it's subtitled "Life in a sinking ship" because that's pretty much what the songs are all about... a dark, intense trip to India, set on a broken ship...

I took inspiration from John Cale's song "Captain Hook", the epic but introspective tale I covered some time ago for a compilation, and of course, the Conrad novel which lends its name to the opening track.
Musically, we're in lush analogue pop territory, with rich, warm textures and vintage drum machines.
Looking back, the sound is evocative of Dennis Wilson's incredible "Pacific Ocean Blues" album, with its dense, intricate wall of sound, but also Devo's synth-pop ("Heart of Darkness"), Dylan and REM's folk classicism ("Broken Sails") and Peter Gabriel's organic soundscapes ("The Ghost of India Supreme", which borrows its name from "Captain Hook" lyrics).

It was essentially done with the Prophet 08 as main instrument... if you listen to tracks 1 or 4, for instance, that's pretty much the fantastic synth from Dave Smith Instruments all the way through...
Save for that... well, whenever you hear bass, that's the Moog Little Phatty...
The strings on "The Fortune Song" are Gforce Virtual String Machine and there's some Roland Alpha Juno-1 as well on the instrumental parts for this track.
The opening chords on "Empty the Boat" are Korg Wavestation.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

great work, really nice ep!

khoral said...

Thanks John