A series of three free mp3 singles to mark the 10th anniversary of the beginning of Karda Estra (which roughly approximates to when I set up my first home studio back in November 1997).

Best wishes, Richard Wileman (Nov 2007)

Listen or download at:

SOUNDCLICK

The first piece in this series of anniversary releases has it's title taken from a line in the novel Dracula Cha Cha Cha by Kim Newman: 'He was a for-the moment peron, a present-tense man, just right for the atom age sense of impermanence.' I used this line/book for inspiration as I was:

a) currently reading it at the time(!),

b) it is an alternate history of Dracula - a character I mostly ignored this time round, but did have some fun transplanting KE favourite 'John Deth' into the fray as the Crimson Executioner and thus expanding my own alternate history.

c) the novel was published in 1998, which is when the first KE album 'A Winter In Summertime' was released.

Credits: Richard Wileman (composer, producer, classical, electric and bass guitars, keyboards, percussion, rastrophone), Ileesha Bailey (vocals), Helen Dearnley (violin), Caron Hansford (oboe), Amy Hedges (left) - (clarinet).

Island Universes (mp3 single release 29/03/08)

After the 'Constellations' album, this represents a return to composing music inspired by the night sky. 'Island Universes' are perhaps better known as Galaxies - 'vast systems of billions of stars that populate the Universe'. I hoped to try and evoke some of the emptyness, beauty and drama of space. I was especially inspired to write this after listening to the Chappell library music recordings 'Experiments In Space' by Robert Farnon.

Credits: Richard Wileman (composer, producer, classical, electric and bass guitars, keyboards, percussion, bouzouki), Zoe Josey (flute), Caron Hansford (cor anglais), Amy Hedges (clarinet).

There Is No Finished World (mp3 single release 17/05/08)

Inspired to a degree by the surrealist painter Andre Masson's 'automatic drawing' technique .... a spot of 'automatic composing', if you will. Mason described automatic drawing as: 'physically, you must make a void in yourself: the automatic drawing taking it's source in the unconscious must appear as an unforseen birth. The first graphic apparitions on the paper are pure gesture, rhythm, incantation, and as a result, pure scrawl. This is the first phase. In the second phase, the image that was latent reclaims it's rights.'

I decided to make a simple two finger guitar chord the 'pencil' and the timing of 5/4 the 'canvas.' I then recorded a 'stream of consciousness' set of these two finger chords bouncing around the neck of the guitar for my first phase. The second phase was seeing what I could do melodically with these sequences ... which also included adjusting a few bars to 3/4.

Credits: Richard Wileman (composer, producer, classical, electric and bass guitars, keyboards, percussion, bouzouki), Helen Dearnley (violin), Zoe Josey (flute, soprano saxophone), Amy Hedges (clarinet).