Nostramus Discography Recordings of Substance, HEMP004, 12" EP Recordings of Substance, HEMP 005 CD Album Recordings Of Substance – HEMP 5 DJV, 12" Vinyl x2 Shadow Records – SDW035-2, CD Hypnogogia Records - GOG 1201, 12" EP Comp Recordings Of Substance - HEMP 11, CD, Vinyl 12" Umbrellicus Records UMB 001, CD Album Hypnagogia – GOGCD02, CD Comp Fi Sci – FSC001, CD Comp Schmeeneytunes SCHMEENEY 010, CD Album Jolt Records, JOLT001. White label 12″ single Irritant Records - IRCD001 Diamond Seeds – DS-NS-001, CD Album Diamond Seeds DS-THC-001, CD Album Diamond Seeds DS-NS-002, CD Album Diamond Seeds DS-NS-003 : Single available Bandcamp and CD Baby Diamond Seeds DS-NS-004 : Single available Bandcamp and CD Baby Diamond Seeds DS-NS-005 : Single available Bandcamp and CD Baby Diamond Seeds DS-NS-006 : Single available Bandcamp and CD Baby
Predictions EP - Nostramus
Earthlight (Justice Remix), Earthlight Two (Nostramus Mix), Dark Jewel, Earthlight (Witchman Remix). Released 1997.
Drum and Bass, Breaks. An EP to promote my new artist name; Nostramus and the forthcoming album; Earthlights. Credits include songwriting, and on my two mixes, sound design, arranging, performance, recording, mixing and production. Recorded at the 33 Studio, Luton in 1996.
Earthlights Nostramus
Babel, Let's Fuck It Up, The Oohs, Dark Jewel, Earthlight, Interplanetary Bass, Mystic Drum And Space, Live 'N' Direc, Flashbacks, A Force As Yet Unknown. Released 1997
Drum and Bass, Breaks, Future Jazz. Earthlights was my first true solo project as Nostramus. Guest include Prince Malachi, Caroline Nische, MC 13, Derek Smith. Credits include songwriting, sound design, arranging, performance, recording, mixing and production. Recorded at the 33 Studio, Luton in 1996. There was also a double 12" vinyl version and an American release. In 2009 I remastered the album and re-released.
Earthlights - Nostramus
Babel, Interplanetary Bass, Earthlight, Let's Fuck It Up, Dark Jewel, Mystic Drum 'N' Space, Live 'N' Direc', The Wobble. Released 1997.
Drum and Bass, Breaks, Future Jazz. A version of Earthlights was also released on a double 12" 45 RPM set. Credits include songwriting, sound design, arranging, performance, recording, mixing and production. Recorded at the 33 Studio, Luton in 1996.
Earthlights - Nostramus
Babel, Let's Fuck It Up, The Oohs, Dark Jewel, Earthlight, Interplanetary Bass, Mystic Drum And Space, Live 'N' Direc, Flashbacks, A Force As Yet Unknown. Released 1998.
Drum and Bass, Breaks, Future Jazz. Earthlights was released a year later in the United States on Shadow Records. From this several inclusions on compilation albums followed. Credits include songwriting, sound design, arranging, performance, recording, mixing and production. Recorded at the 33 Studio, Luton in 1996.
Emerald - Nostramus
Unique track submitted to a 4 track EP. Emerald. Released 1997.
Latin Drum and Bass. Credits include songwriting, sound design, arranging, performance, recording, mixing and production. Recorded at the 33 Studio, Luton in 1997. The Hypnogogia Collective of artists, musicians and other creatives showcase EP. I submitted this track warts and all because it was a dance-hall killer when played out live at Hypnogogia's party's. After several failed attempts of remixing this to correct some sampler steal off, I let the original 'quick mix' go because it had a certain warmth and depth to it's sound. Lesson; be wary of sterilising the essence out of a mix!
Illustrated Man - James Hardway
Contributed: Illustrated Man (Nostramus' Earthlight Mix). Released 1997.
Future Jazz, Drum n Bass. Nice to work on some funky jazzy D & B. Credits include songwriting, sound design, arranging, performance, recording, mixing and production. Recorded at the 33 Studio, Luton in 1997.
Bomb Babylon - Nostramus
Exodus Free The Spirit Festival 1998 Special. P-Something, Perception, High Pressure Drop, Extinct Species, Bomb Babylon, Canzanola, Don't Let It Get Away. Released 1998.
Last project recorded at the 33 Studio in Luton, the old art centre's building it was housed in was condemned by the council who had other ideas about opening a brand new art centre. Had a fight against time to complete this album. The pictured issue came out as part of an 'Exodus Festival Special' to mark a Nostramus live performance at the festival. Guest include Caroline Nische, MC 13, Danny Nugent. Credits include songwriting, sound design, arranging, performance, recording, mixing and production. Recorded at the 33 Studio, Luton in 1998.
Hybrids - Nostramus
Unique track submitted to a Hypnagogia Compilation album. A Thousand Year Rush. Released 1998.
X Files Drum and Bass. "I just gave myself a boost doctor" Listening back the track is too long but that is how it was back in 1998. The Hypnagogia collective were a great bunch of creative people to be involved with - happy days! Credits include songwriting, sound design, arranging, performance, recording, mixing and production. Recorded at the 33 Studio, Luton in 1997.
Eclipse Of The Moon - Nostramus
Unique track submitted by Nostramus (The author) to a Fi-Sci Compilation album titled; Eclipse Of The Moon And Falling Star. Cerche - Featuring – C. Nische, Merlyn, Fez. Released 1998.
Celtic or Pagan 3 step Drum and Bass. Recorded at Kool World, Luton, 1998.Credits include songwriting, sound design, arranging, recording, mixing and production.
Takin New Steps Nostramus
P-Something, Barbarella, Cerche-Dub, Emerald, To Be Free, Perception, Takin New Steps. Released 2001.
Futurist Breakbeats, Garage and Drum and Bass. A collection of new ideas expanding on my earlier ambient Drum and Bass material. Including a couple of tracks from 'Bomb Babylon' , 'Emerald' from the Hypnagogia EP, a dub extended version of 'Cerche' and finishing with Takin New Steps - a collage of re-mixes of garage and two step based styles.Credits include songwriting, sound design, arranging, performance, recording, mixing and production. Recorded at the 33 Studio, Kool World and the THC studio Luton between 1998-2001.
Hero Of Bamboostick - Nostramus
Hero Of Bamboo-stick - Nostramus with Mention and Golden Child. Released 2003.
Ninja Drum and Bass. A weird year spent working in an Elstree studio as part of the Jolt Records team. On their books were a couple of Mc's; Mention and Golden Child - I played them a track I was working on, they loved it and put to work writing some lyrics. Their tome suited perfectly the martial art ninja samples I had in place and soon I was building up a number of mixes. Jolt immediately seized the result and penned it for their first release.Credits include songwriting, sound design, arranging, performance, recording, mixing and production. Recorded at the Jolt Studio, Elstree, 2003.
Irritant Open Your Eyes
My late friend Greg Herbert formerly from the Luton punk band The Rattlesnakes played drums on this Hardcore Punk Metal album alongside Kath B, Marky Mark and Tim P. All tracks originally recorded by Andy Taylor and Lorraine B at CTS Studios in Wembly in 1994 .
My credits on the 2008 CD include Post Production and Mastering of the album. As 'Nostramus' I also remixed and produced a track on the album called "We're Dead" (Track 14) Released 2009.
Earthlights Remastered - Nostramus
Babel, Let's Fuck It Up, The Oohs, Dark Jewel, Earthlight, Interplanetary Bass, Mystic Drum And Space, Live 'N' Direc, Flashbacks, A Force As Yet Unknown. Released 2009.
A remastered version of my Nostramus Earthlights solo album, first released in 1997. I re-tweaked some of the material and added some extra samples. The aim being to bring the material up to modern sound standards and with a hope that I actually might earn something for future sales! I created the cover artwork as well. Guests include Prince Malachi, Caroline Nische, MC 13, Derek Smith. Credits include songwriting, sound design, arranging, performance, recording, mixing and production. Originally recorded at the 33 Studio, Luton in 1996 and then recompiled, tweaked and mastered at my home studio in 2009.
Dark Ambience THC - Nostramus
Pieces of Grail movement one, The Unfoldment, Beyond Your Judgement, Pieces of Grail movement two, A New Person Is Born, House Of The Big Eye, Pre-Prequiem Mass, The Aether and the Pendulum, Eyes In The Dark, Pieces of Grail movement three. The Dark Matters, The Haunted Church, It's Not Real Grief, Don't Go Out Into The Fog, Pieces of Grail movement four, The Gates, Brief Instance Of Pleasure. Released 2010.
Psychotropic-fuelled Enhanced Dark Ambience, a Nostramus - Spin-off project performed by my alter ego THC (The Hidden Core). A collection of sublime atmosphere's and sound-scapes I had hidden in my locker over the years. Elements from earlier periods, notably The Big Eye and early Nostramus period, some of the collection taken from two mixtapes I put together in 1995 titled THC One and THC Two. Not an album you would play on your own, in the dark in a lonely forest! I designed the artwork as well. Credits include songwriting, sound design, arranging, performance, recording, mixing and production. Originally recorded at the 33 Studio, Luton in the mid 90's and then recompiled, tweaked and mastered at my home studio in 2010.
Doomsday Dot Com - Nostramus
Doomsday Dot Com, Strange Pursuit, Hero of Bamboo Stick, Wow! Interesting, Dannay-Ting, We Do What Do We, The Dark Dayz, Lights Out!, The Goat, Duel-Battle of the Elements (UK Decay re-mix), The Facts Dont Matter Anymore, He Who Dares Wins (Ella Jo re-mix). Released 2011.
Breakbeat, Dub Techno, Abstract, Drum n Bass. Although two other Nostramus concept compilations were released in the early noughties, I regard this as Nostramus's official follow up album to Earthlights. With Hero Of Bamboostick included and with a satirical look toward the hysteria of 2012 and beyond into the twenty first century. I went to town researching open source samples that define the moods of the times and integrated into soundscaped rhythms, but admittedly it's harsher and angrier than pre 9/11 Earthlights but maybe with more humour than Bomb Babylon.Credits include research, collating, songwriting, sound design, arranging, performance, recording, mixing, production and mastering. Recorded at my home studio 2010 - 2011.
Multiversal
So I start the piece with a rather innocuous bar-room piano and it quickly rises and invokes in my mind a sonic dream sequence of arpeggios and other hypnotic shape shifting effects that rise and lull the listening into hopefully a higher state of sonic bliss as the motif's rise and crescendo building with subliminal and phased drums that leap forward and back into the wash and waves of the invocation. Well that’s what I am calling it. I was tranced out into a state of bliss whilst making this, maybe if it can do it to me it can to others as well and so far, the folk I have played this to absolutely love it to bits as a 'chilled out' passage.
"Multiversal" was never meant to be a traditional Nostramus Drum And Bass sound but it was always part of a broader and more eclectic church in the sound I produce for Nostramus. Who knows maybe in the future it is possible I will remix it in another style, maybe? I have so many other ideas to work on it may be sometime before I re-address it with another mix.
Recording? I use Cubase and a host of plugins these days to produce my music. I have recently upgraded my set up so now I have the added possibility of working my sound to moving video, which frankly adds another layer of inspiration to my work. Working to video blimey but it does open ones eyes to landscapes and soundscapes and all betwixt.
So I see "Multiversal" as an invocation, an invitation to journey between musical dimensions. I hope it does it for you.
Crystalwytch
Continuing the theme from "Multiversal" here the work is played out to Helen J Street's lucid and phantasmagoric poem "The Crystalwytch" which is whispered as in the breeze on a moonlit night. The 'Crystalwych" could be described as analogous to a night time version of the 'Green Man' of the woods or a Druidic gathering in the Grove. Riding a chariot with seven jewel incrusted horses into the white marbled and sparkling heavens. A pagan allegory for what in realty is yet another alternative universe or simply a gentle attempt at autonomous sensory meridian response? In the poem things might not be the way they seem to be, the 'Crystalwych' may actually be a visitor from the other and the chariot and seven horses a craft sent from a far distant but mourned future. Who knows?
Moving on from the previous single 'Multiversal' I now re-enter the world of ambient and jazz flavoured drum and bass. I am not sure whether or not this would make a hard core floor filler, rather than attempting a mesmerising transcendent auditory meditation, or perhaps better still both. I have sat here with this song playing back in a loop and have been absolutely tripped out on it, of course I would say that but hopefully this will work the same way for at least some of you.
I am much indebted and would like to thank Ella Jo for her input here, for her whispered oratory. Also Tony "Redfish" Gee once more for his magnificent and succinct trumpet playing.
Tony recorded his trumpet remotely and I felt as always, quite confident that he would deliver. As a scientist in his day time job, he has that heightened empathy and love for the great British eccentricity that makes for a true thinking-outside-of-the-box, musician. Hopefully there will be much more "Redfish" collaborations in the future.
I enjoyed playing electric piano on this, which is how the idea kicked off. I laid down the chord progressions and then played a lead pattern over the top of the chords. The overall effect I was looking towards was 'soft' and 'jazzy' although I would be the first to admit that I am simply not good enough to play 'proper jazz'. I do go for the mood that works and once I obtain something like the desired performance, I record it warts and all. I then refine and edit it into place.
Optimum Singularity
"Optimum Singularity" what is it about?
Continuing the theme from "Multiversal" and "Crystalwych" I am attempting towards lucid and dark realms of musical rotations that hopefully emulate visual manifestations orbiting around a musical and gravitational inevitability in temporal space. The music can be described as a helix ~ a spiraling circle in three dimensions as a metaphor for quantum tunneling and a theory that in some fashion Black Holes can channelize potential warp drive and create pathways to time travel and circumnavigating the Universe. The point of 'Optimum Singularity' being the perfect transcribe for a theoretical event that would open up a gateway to the infinite as proposed in Kubrick and Clarkes 2001 A Space Odyssey, an optimum singularity.
The oratory is a reading from Kingsnorth's 'The Wake' spoken in a shadow language related to old english. It refers to the time of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, where the former inhabitants were brutally defeated and subjugated. Wives (Wifmen) and daughters raped, villages and land burned to the ground and pillaged and the ordinary peasants turned to slaves for their new masters. The Norman's whom by the way still cling to power in many cases in form of the landed aristocracy, in Britain. Our orature wanders the wasteland after losing his family and village and eventually teams up with the resistance fighting back against the Normans.
Recording? I use Cubase and a host of plugins these days to produce my music. I have recently upgraded my set up so now I have the added possibility of working my sound to moving video, which frankly adds another layer of inspiration to my work. Working to video blimey but it does open ones eyes to landscapes and soundscapes and all betwixt.
Pan Transversal
" Pan ~ Transversal " what’s up with this?
Developing from the theme from "Multiversal", "Crystalwych" and “Optimum Singularity” “ Pan ~ Transversal” is a deep and dark trip into a primordial world reminiscent of something out of Dante’s Inferno or something out of one of Hieronymus Bosch paintings.
There are two movements which I see like lines converging into a form within the piece as the journey moves through monolithic and dripping reverberations, enticed by diabolical jesters and pied pipers to an otherworld where physics and geometry as we know is turned upside down. Out of the void comes the music box that falls without the famous Spaghetti Western scene. The scene is set for the arrival of the horned god Pan as Crowley’s ode is invoked, oozing with hammer house drama. “Oh Pan” leads up to the frenzy. Here, Pan’s pipes are morphed into a dramatically intense Brass motive.
Then cometh the discordant drum and bass breaks and the track proper kicks in with the D n B equivalent of the drunken stance in the Shaolin kung fu.
Well I will leave it at that, make of it what you will. Personally this track deeply contrast’s the earlier trio of kinder gentle motion with an exciting wild and dazzling earthy flavour, I sure hope ‘Pan’ will think this as a worthy contribution to his mythos.