Self Isolator by Bradfield Dumpleton

This collection of recordings began with the track Particulate Matter, recorded in January prior to the Great Shadow of Uncertainty. Then, one week in March, as the Shadow began its march across our minds, I recorded the title track Self Isolator (featuring the beautiful yearning of Malcolm Martin's flugelhorn), and from there the album became a meditation on isolation, the microcosm / macrocosm, the particulate patterning of everything and our place in space.

I often set myself creative limitations as a way of dismantling my familiar maps, and this time I determined only to compose on an old Yamaha PSR-74 keyboard. Not possessing any kind of 'real' synthesiser, I often use this keyboard for raw elements that I mutate through various FX later, but I hadn't yet used it as the primary platform for an album. On several of these pieces I ran the keyboard through an old wah pedal to see what might happen. Use of drums, cello bass, electric guitar is kept to a minimum, most of the sounds here are keyboard mutations.

Self isolation is my natural preference in life, and in this I'm not alone - my Aspergers, my creative temperament, my need for solitude & deep reflection, all favour staying at home. Having it imposed and policed 'out there' gives it a different quality, an atmosphere of foreboding and uncertainty - like the sickly haze & heavy stillness of the bushfires that came so close to our home a year ago. The Not Knowing, the Waiting....the world no longer familiar. This is the mood this music explores.

A recurring image for me as I recorded these pieces was that of an astronaut floating untethered in space, with the blue skin of Earth far below, and a sharpened sense of us all as dust...

A library of musical sketchbooks, mapping my various evolutions from 2005 to next week. Dedicated to exploring sound for its own sake. Many diverse delights here for the patient & attentive listener.

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