The first 20 tracks are now collected into Sound Fascination, volume 1 – available now as a pre-order: download all 20 tracks now, and once I finish editing, remixing and otherwise massaging it into a finished album, you’ll get that too!

Broken Saints is a ‘motion comic epic’ which has captured the imagination of tens of thousands of fans – and major Internet awards – worldwide since its inception almost ten years ago. Written and directed by Brooke Burgess, illustrated by Andrew West and designed and programmed by Ian Kirby, it tells the dark, unsettling but ultimately compelling story of four characters ‘from the quiet corners of the globe’ who are brought together by shared experiences, dark visions and hardships to face a terrifying threat.

This volume presents a personal selection of the ‘core’ series soundtrack, including the major character themes and crucial moments from the Saintly journey. It includes material from all four volumes of the complete soundtrack set. Obviously much is missing too, but this selection is a great introduction to the musical and sonic world of the series…

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Passage is the record of a number of journeys, all very much interconnected, some still underway. The first journey was a physical one, and took me to India, Nepal and Thailand for six months when I was but a wee lad of 19. Within that journey was a photographic odyssey which generated a collection of around 1000 slides and prints, some of which are even worth looking at… The other journeys are more nebulous; perhaps it’s better to let the music tell that story…

To sum up Passage in a few words is very difficult; quite simply it was, and remains, one of the most elaborate things I have ever undertaken. The initial idea was to select 12 photographs that told the story of my journey, and compose a suite of music around them, each piece exploring the mood and texture of the image it was based on. The results touch on everything from jazz to ambient, classical to trip-hop, worldbeat to elecroacoustics to minimalism, from rigorously composed complexity to freeform trance-like improvisation. It is realized on piano, synthesizer, trumpet, flute, acoustic guitar, fretless bass, and a selection of odd ethnic hand percussion.

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The music on A Suite Hereafter was originally conceived as the soundtrack for Opaque, a dance poetry solo by Lori Hamar, produced by Suddenly Dance Theatre, Victoria. It has been substantially re-worked to express my fascination with historical, spiritual and literary notions of resurrection. The titles are drawn from the Sufi, Kabbalah and Christian Gnostic traditions, and refer to various stages in the journey towards resurrection in this life – the idea being that true resurrection is simply our world, re-imagined…

A Suite Hereafter features piano, french horn, soprano vocal (Cathy Peddlesden) and drums (Joby Baker) prominently, with flute, Hammond organ, synthesizer, electric bass, Jaymar toy piano and Persian hand drum playing supportive roles. it was recorded and mixed at Bigger Boots Audio in Victoria, B.C., Canada. Stylistically, it ranges from minimalist, trance-inducing polyrhythmic patterns (think Michael Nymans or Philip Glass) to rather intense, twisted and distorted tone poetry, to spacious, resonant vistas that summon a strange, magical calm.

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Broken Saints volume 3 continues the eerie, compelling vibe of the first two volumes (‘Passage’ and ‘A Suite Hereafter’) into the series’ darker second half.

Broken Saints is a ‘motion comic epic’ which has captured the imagination of tens of thousands of fans – and major Internet awards – worldwide since its inception eight years ago. Written and directed by Brooke Burgess, illustrated by Andrew West and designed and programmed by Ian Kirby, it tells the dark, unsettling but ultimately compelling story of four characters ‘from the quiet corners of the globe’ who are brought together by shared experiences, dark visions and hardships to face a terrifying threat.

In addition to contributing previously existing music from my albums, Passage and A Suite Hereafter, I produced a body of new work inspired by the dark and fascinating atmosphere of this acclaimed series. With the addition of some tracks from supporting composer Quentin Grey (performing with collaborators as ‘Methadone’), this forms the second half of the Broken Saints soundtrack, in Volumes 3 and 4.

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Broken Saints volume 4 contains tracks from the final, climactic chapters of the Broken Saints saga – some of the most intense and powerful work in the series.

Late in 1999, I was asked by my cousin Brooke if I would be willing to contribute some music to a project he had begun, called Broken Saints. It was planned as a 24-part series, presented online, combining his writing and direction with the artistic and programming talents of two other collaborators.

At the time I was in the process of moving to Europe to pursue other musical goals, and could not work on the project full-time, so I offered him my back-catalogue of instrumental compositions; these subsequently became the core soundtrack for the first third or so of the series.

After a year or so, two things became clear to us: first, that Broken Saints had touched a nerve with a growing internet community, obviously more than ready for storytelling of the depth and scope that Brooke and company were creating; and second, that they were going to need some more music. So began a period of compositional activity which, although I was unaware of it at the time, would dominate the next few years of my creative life – and become, for the moment at least, my best-known work.

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continuum:one was recorded in concert, August 29, 1999 at the Philip T. Young Recital Hall at the University of Victoria, B.C., Canada. As much as possible without being neurotic about it, I tried to approach the piano with nothing pre-conceived at all in terms of what I was going to play.

The resulting recording is 73 minutes of continuous, largely unedited improvised ‘flow’ – I mostly just tried to get out of the way and let the music that wanted to, come out. It explores a number of themes which emerged of themselves in the first few minutes of play, finding and listening to where those themes might want to go, and how they might sound or feel in the various landscapes we found ourselves in along the way.

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In 2004 I joined a team of creative people to transform the Broken Saints online series, for which I had already written and produced the body of the soundtrack, into a 4-dosc collector’s edition DVD set. At the end of the rather intense process, I thought it would be interesting to take some of the themes which had become important in the series, and put them into a different and more intimate musical setting: as a solo piano concert. Thus I have selected four themes – two from previously extant material, two composed specifically for the series – and used them as ’springboards’ for the extended improvisations on this album. The resulting journeys, almost 78 minutes in total, took me quite far from the source material, but I hope I have not lost its essential spirit…

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