Perspex Sunrise came out of a few confluences. For one, I love to listen to Indian Raga music. I am not an aficionado, but I have appreciated its use in meditation. In addition, I had discovered the Soma Labs Lyra-8 could function as a kind of digital tanpura; an Indian droning instrument often used in Ragas.
To me it is the sound of isolation (note: not loneliness), vastness, and a sort of ‘sacredness’. Melancholy, yes. I will speak more on this in another post. The space it creates for me is one that I find works for thinking and imagining, finding inspiration for meaningful directions in my life, and sometimes as a kind of respite from the world where I can lament.
The title for the album comes from a scene in a novel that I started writing and likely will not finish; not for fear that I won’t, but because I think it not necessary to the end for which it was purposed. I may change my mind of course. The passage in which the title is mentioned is this;
He sat in his apartment looking at the window; aged and jaundice yellow. The orange glow filtering lazily through the blurry city outside. A perspex sunrise. No past and no future; just a brutalistic present.
That passage references brutalism; a type of architecture that originated in England during the post-war era of the 1950’s and lasted into the 1970’s. I enjoy photographing brutalist architecture whenever I come across it. We have some great examples here in Sydney; the UTS building and the Sydney Opera House being prominent, and the school of my teenage years; Pennant Hills High School, being my own closest emotional inspiration. The school was photographed in 1967 by Australia’s arguably most famous photographer Max Dupain.
But I digress…
This album represents my first effort at overcoming musicians-palsy; perhaps artists-palsy to be honest, wherein, and it being a hilarious meme oft repeated online in musicians forums, the artist is so continuously distracted by either perfectionism or fear of failure (are they not one and the same?) that they fail to deliver the final goods to the outside world. I have broken that particular blockage now, and am set for greatness no doubt…
In addition, I would admit that this music has been in my possession for a couple of years, and indeed, I have a tidy backlog of albums to come. The next will be more melodic, but still melancholic, and inspirational at least to me. I do hope you enjoy them, and this website which I hope to fill with more of my naive wonderment and reverie.
In conclusion, I trust you enjoy this music and until we meet anon, fare thee well.