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High Altitude Ballooning By Michael Mönch

High Altitude Ballooning

Check out this cool high altitude ballooning video from Michael Mönch which uses a weather balloon and 2,000 litres of helium to film a journey up to the outer reaches of the earth’s atmosphere. When the balloon finally bursts due to the low pressure at over 30,000 metres high, a parachute brings the camera safely back to earth and is located via GPS.

My ambient space music track Coronal Mass Ejection is used in the video.

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How Far Away Is It – A Video Book By David Butler

How Far Away Is It - 03 - The Solar System (1080p)

How Far Away Is It is a video book by David Butler that examines the Hubble space telescope and details the distance between objects in our galaxy. The video is split into several chapters covering the Earth, the Solar System and the Heliosphere and you can watch the whole thing for free on YouTube and also on the official website at howfarawayisit.com

The video has been up for a while but only just come to my attention (my music track Exodus is featured several times in the video, as can be heard in the video clip above). It’s a fascinating and beautifully put together project about astrophysics, cosmology and the scale of the universe.

How Far Away Is It is a video book of Hubble and other space and ground based telescope pictures together with an illustrated explanation of how we know how far away these objects are -- from your back yard to the most distant galaxies. How Small Is It takes you from your backyard to the smallest things that exist and covers the Higgs Boson.”

David Butler

The project has obviously been lovingly put together by David with a lot of care, experience and knowledge and it’s a fascinating look at the scale of our galaxy. A great learning resource about our galaxy and well worth a watch!

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Los Olvidados By Manuel León Caballero

Los Olvidados is a low budget slasher movie from Spanish indie filmmaker Manuel León Caballero. This is Manuel’s very first feature film and it was included in the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival 2014. You can now watch the full film on Vimeo above (which features my instrumental piano track Cursed in the credits).

Los Olvidados is a little slasher movie shot with no money, no crew and in just seven days. After its premiere in the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival 2014, here comes its free release on the internet.”

Manuel León Caballero

You can see more of Manuel’s work over on his Vimeo channel:

https://vimeo.com/leoncaballero

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Still Life Soundtrack By Rachel Portman

STILL LIFE - Official HD Trailer

A few days ago I had the belated pleasure of watching the 2013 film Still Life directed by Uberto Pasolini. The film stars the always brilliant Eddie Marsan as a council worker who tries to track down relatives of people who’ve died alone. It’s a very quiet subtle film and Eddie Marsan is amazing in his ability at being able to really hold and hang on to silence but still captivate your attention.

Rachel Portman - End Titles

One thing that really stood out and framed the whole thing perfectly was the beautiful score by British composer Rachel Portman.

The music is very delicate and haunting (you can hear the end titles in the video on the right) and it suits the melancholy emotional tone of the film perfectly.

Rachel Portman is an extremely talented and prolific composer having scored numerous films including The Cider House Rules, Chocolat, Never Let Me Go and Mike Leigh’s Four Days In July (in fact the score for Still Life reminded me at times of the soundtrack to Mike Leigh’s Naked, composed by Andrew Dickson and another one of my favourite film soundtracks).

The soundtrack for Still Life is available to download from iTunes here:

https://itunes.apple.com/album/still-life-original-motion/id924943882

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Cryosleep Dreams Featured On Ultima Thule Radio

Cryosleep Dreams featured on Ultima Thule RadioI’m really pleased to see that Ultima Thule radio recently featured my ambient space music album Cryosleep Dreams on their wonderful show.

For those who don’t know, Ultima Thule is a well-respected and long-running specialist ambient radio show based in Australia and also available to stream online at ultimathule.info (or get the podcast on iTunes).

You can hear several tracks from Cryosleep Dreams in episode 1087 along with other tracks from ambient masters Steve Roach, Erik Wollo and others. Many thanks to show host Mike G (who also runs www.ambientmusicguide.com) for featuring my music on the show and for the kind words.

Cryosleep Dreams: A gorgeous deep album of electronic space music.”

Mike G (Ultima Thule ambient radio)

Cryosleep Dreams is available as an mp3 download here on the site as well as from iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Bandcamp and other online music stores.

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Tom Baker Reads Poetry Over My Ambient Space Music For HCS Voice Packs!

The inimitable Tom Baker is heard reciting poetry over some of my ambient space music in this Soundcloud preview from HCS Voice Packs!

HCS Voice Packs provide audio overlay voice packs for games and space simulators such as Elite Dangerous, Voice Attack and more. Tom Baker is a legend in the acting world and obviously known for his iconic portrayal of Dr Who, so I’m honoured to have some of my music playing underneath his dulcet tones!

HCS have recorded a huge library of voice packs with other icons from legendary sci-fi shows and actors such as Blakes Seven, Brian Blessed and many more. Check out their websites:

http://www.hcsvoicepacks.com/

https://www.facebook.com/elitedangerousvoicepack/

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Music Artwork

Below you can see a gallery of all the cover artwork for my music tracks and albums.

 

(cover photo for Cryosleep Dreams is used with kind permission from SJFBetty.com)

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Arrow Of Time – Milky Way Time Lapse Collection By Harley Grady

Arrow Of Time - Milky Way Time Lapse Collection

Can’t believe I don’t seem to have posted about this video here before but perhaps it just slipped through the cracks at a busy time when it was released. It’s a gorgeous Milky Way time lapse video from photographer and filmmaker Harley Grady that features my music track Shadowland.

“This video is a collection of Milky Way time lapse videos that I have shot from 2010-2013. It has been really fun doing so, and I decided to put all of my footage together in one long video to represent what I have done so far.”

Harley Grady

It’s a really beautiful video with some lovely star trails and astrophotography time lapse and I think it fits together with the music perfectly. You can see more of Harley’s work and license his footage from the following links:

http://www.Flickr.com/Harles99

http://www.youtube.com/user/Harles99

http://www.pond5.com/artist/AstroTimeLapse

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My Music Featured In Toilet Cleaning Commercial!

In a slight change from the usual artistic time lapse videos, gritty documentaries and moody short films that I often post about featuring my music, this commercial for a toilet cleaning gel uses my lighthearted track Bossa Lounge to great effect!

It makes an unusual change to hear my music used in a toilet cleaning commercial but always good to hear my work being placed!

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ASMR Music And Triggers

Recently I’ve had several people contact me telling me they find my music useful in triggering ASMR. If you have no idea what ASMR is (I didn’t at first) it stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. It’s a physical (but almost internal) sensation usually characterised by pleasant tingling feelings in the scalp or down the spine, although it affects different people in different ways, and sometimes not at all.

From what I’m told, it’s an abstract experience that’s hard to explain but often likened to things like water rushing under your scalp or having your brain gently massaged or tickled! While I’ve certainly experienced similar tingling feelings when listening to music before, I wasn’t really aware of it as a specific phenomenon, but it’s interesting that so many people report shared experiences.

Common things that can bring about these pleasurable feelings are known as ‘triggers’ and include things like quiet soothing talking, soft whispering or even something as abstract as watching videos of people carrying out simple but deeply-focused tasks. There are thousands of ASMR videos on YouTube if you want to find out more. From what I’ve been told, it’s a very unique experience and what triggers ASMR in one person may have no effect on another.

It seems that my ambient space music is the most common trigger out of all my tracks to use as ASMR music, probably because it’s often very calm, atmospheric and soothing. I also tend to put a lot of detailed but subtle layers of sound in my music, so I guess that’s certainly likely to enhance the effect.

I’ve put together a playlist above of some of my ambient music videos that you might want to take a listen to and see if it triggers anything for you! And there’s links to more tracks below if you want to try them out (some are also available on Spotify/iTunes/Rdio etc.) and you obviously don’t have to license them if you’re just downloading for your own listening:

http://www.thebluemask.com/tag/asmr/

Obviously, listening on headphones is likely to reveal more detail and make the experience more intense. If any of my music does anything for you, I’d love to hear about your experiences -- feel free to let me know.