Looking back at The Sun in the Bottle (TSITB) I remember that it was more a catalyst to start recording the musical ideas I had piling up. To release them on CD as a form that I felt finalises them instead of them lying on the computer being constantly worked and changed.

All my work is done on computer and I have a folder with all my uncompleted works contained within. I have tracks that suit the style of TSITB more than my more recent releases that date back to the late 80s which I still load up, listen to and "fiddle" with. It's such an annoying distraction most of the time but every now and then I open something up and think "that bit sounds interesting I might sneak that into what I'm working on at the moment".

So what's it like to listen to TSITB now ? I still really like it. The opening track Before Now sticks out like a sore thumb. This is something I did after getting my first Future Sound of London album "Dead Cities" of which I believe helped me with the confidence in releasing non-popular music. It's my first track to be quite dark. Using that Avant Garde formula to create a perception of horror or fear and shock through discordant tones and large dynamic range changes. Quite a short track really - I hadn't quite learnt the benefit of the longer track that gives the listener time to change their mind set. Nicely sparse track which is something I could learn from as I find myself cluttering tracks too often on my later works.

The second track on the album is Scylla's Battle which continues the dark theme but also the more melodic tracks that I was primarily writing at the time. I had just come through a stage in my life where I was earning decent money and I could finally start buying studio gear. I was buying cards for the computer but not actual synths as they were and still are really expensive but the emergence of synths on computer card was well and truly happening. As I mentioned some of these tracks go back to the late 80s where the bedroom musician had to be a millionaire bedroom musician. It was still really expensive. Up until now I had be using an several borrowed 8 track machines which were not the greatest to work with. But come the mid to late 90's and I started to notice affordable audio gear for the computer. Also affordable computer power was getting to the point where you could use it as a multi-track audio recorder. My first multi-track card was an Echo Audio Darla which I bought when I sold my beloved Roland SH-5 analogue synth. I still regret selling the SH-5 but knew somewhere down the line I would get myself a modular synth so I wasn't totally devastated.