Electronic composer Ian Boddy's most experimental release to date, featuring five self-playing analogue generative soundscapes.

 

Boddy remains one of the best known names in UK electronic music. He has been releasing music for over 35 years as well as playing concerts, creating sound design and composing library music. Yet despite this long musical career, he still manages to surprise his listeners and Tone Science could represent his most innovative statement. For this release Boddy has returned to his musical roots where experimentation was the name of the game.

 

He has always been fascinated by the random qualities of natural phenomena such as streams, waves, the leaves on a tree or the clouds in the sky. Whilst they seem, on the one hand to always be the same, they are in fact constantly changing and their patterns never exactly repeat. With this thought in mind Boddy set about creating soundscapes using controlled random systems that could self generate themselves using his analogue modular gear. The pitches of the notes in each piece were massaged into various musical scales by the use of note quantisers giving each of the tracks a distinct harmonic voice. 

 

The composition process was the creation of the patch itself. What you hear on these five pieces is the result of complex interactions. Like the natural phenomena Boddy describes above, they appear to stay the same yet they never repeat and each has a distinct mood. By restricting his audio palette on this project to only his analogue modular instruments including vintage FX the pieces have a very pure, electronic nature. 

 

With Tone Science Boddy proves once again that he never rests in his personal musical journey. There are always new sonic territories to explore and for the adventurous listener this album opens up a whole new world of electronica to enjoy.

 

Old school experiments with fresh results!