Omnipathology

Collection Contents

#		Title	Length
1		Hidden statistical distress	3:32	Play
2		Stick me with your rhythm hit	3:10	Play
3		Flockundity	3:07	Play
4		Mixing it with bells on	3:21	Play
5		Shift letter shift case	3:11	Play
6		Ivory is electronic now	4:07	Play
7		Flunking the Kyoto protocol	4:29	Play
8		Arhythmia to the beat of my heart	3:19	Play
9		Hassle hussles rush	0:51	Play
10		Trendy bendy Wendy	3:11	Play
11		Life and the strange charmed quark	3:32	Play
12		Sad for you, displacement	3:56	Play
13		Fun food factory saves the spaghetti farm	3:48	Play
14		Wind up, fear of fun	4:14	Play

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Description

Omnipathology - "music played on the wrong instruments"

Imagine a cold dark night in central London. Not the razzle dazzle glitzy West End. Instead where the tangle of road and rail muddle their way, out, through to the suburbs. Oh, and it's drizzling as well. That fine damp liquid discouragement which London excels in.

Amidst railway clatter; cat call car alarm; syren scream; a slim, elongate, four storey, room-wide construction silently skirts the main line out of Paddington. Not a train, not a siding, but a college. The college where I met computer music.

Curiously, my only other encounter with this building was a course in food hygiene - a possible business idea. But here and now, I pursue the enterprise that is music. You may think I made the wrong choice - you haven't heard my cooking.

I heard Brian Eno say on the radio that now we have the computer a whole branch of music making is dead "All you have to do is press a button..." I disagree. It isn't like that. Press a button, yes. But which button. How long. How often. And do you keep pressing it at the same time as the record button?

As with food, the sensation, a single sound, can give pleasure - chocolate to the ear. But it needs a context to make the most of it. Given proper encouragement any sound may be elevated above a simple solitary sensation - to impart emotion, joy, pleasure, anger, fear and anything else keeping us from a quiet life.

For me, melody, rhythm and repetition (call it re-use) provide this dynamic context which heightens the experience from the otherwise solitary sound.

If asked who are my influences, I don't know how to answer this question honestly. I am a great fan of the Beatles. But my music collection also includes Bowie, Bolan, Pink Floyd, Laurie Anderson, Queen, Stones, and loads of seven inch pop singles.

While I have not tried to emulate any one of them, each gives me something. Even the trashiest single does, in some respect, offer some craft.

So, why don't you have a listen to the samples (all of them) - you tell me (email on the left) who is the strongest influence.

The most influential lesson I learned about music psychology was via the music of Jimi Hendrix. A school friend loaned me Electric Ladyland. I did not understand it. So I listened over and over. I learnt its language. Then. Exquisite.

The lesson: listening is learned - an acquired taste has to be acquired.

It follows, if you have reservations about sound clips from my CD, listen again. Play them over and over. There is something there for you to discover (if you don't like it, you simply haven't played it often enough). "Buy if you don't like, buy if you do" is what I say.

(Even: bookmark/favorite this page and listen again - try it in different contexts, days, times, lightings, smellings and moods... )

The music which EiDoxis (pronounced eye-doc-sys) present in Omnipathology (and more on that later) voices a number of moods and messages.

"Hidden statistical distress" and "Arhythmia to the beat of my heart" are dynamic, uplifting rompts whereas "Flunking the Kyoto Protocol" is decidely angry. "Flockundity" is a synthesised cartoon of a song whereas "Life and the strange charmed quark" has the thumping piano that most properly belongs in a London pub. "Sad for you, displacement" is frankly sad and "Wind up, fear the fun" is menacing.

It's quite a mix, but captures the EiDoxis sound, which as I said before represents a certain attitude to rhythm and melody and re-use, and a striving for quality, aural stimulation and untiring interest.

A final word on the artwork. This also is the work of EiDoxis, using a virtual desktop program called ROOMS 3D to create some 3D objects (tricky but rewarding) and IrfanView to muck about with them and Windows paint and the packages which come with CD burning software to do the rest. And the psuedo-piano keys say, Yes! the piano features in this work. Much of the music was written first for piano and then offered to other instruments... as you can now appreciate for yourself.

And another final word on the title: "Omnipathology". EiDoxis made it all up, as follows: we name as the omnipath one who has pathological curiosity - vainly and pretentiously is an aspiring polymath. And Omnipathology is his incurable condition. From chef to clef it is self-deprecation and bad puns all the way.

Jack Calverley
Founder of EiDoxis

And that bookmark?