Created for the Christmas edition of the Electric Future Collective Music Challenge (EFCMC8)
soundcloud.com/groups/music-challenge
An original carol, based on memories and musings surrounding this photograph. Taken from the front inside porch of a wintered-in Boston home, Christmas 2004.
Ten years ago, I spent (what was then) the snowiest winter ever in Boston. I was there with my family to support a loved one who was going through a serious medical crisis. Daily trips were made from home to hospital. During my stay, storms blanketed the city, leaving the hushed, whitewashed streets and shivering sentinel brownstones of the Back Bay alone to the handful of us that absolutely had to commute.
I'll never forget the 30 minutes or so each day when I made the drive. With even the hardiest Northern folk snowed in, it felt like I had the city to myself. It was such a surreal sight. (Boston with no traffic???) Isolating, yet strangely comforting, It took me out of any mindset I might have been in before or after the journey - literally transporting me to a world all it's own. Driving was also the time I could listen to music of my own choosing (I mostly chose Radiohead). In a very real way, this brief daily respite was my personal rescue from all that was going on around me.
I hope that Ghosts Of Christmas Past reflects some of the very mixed feelings experienced during that time - tension, comfort, cold, warmth, isolating, enveloping, consistently familiar, and interruptingly foreign.
For sound design, some of my 'ghostly' tracks were created from samples I collected for the Heavy Metal EFC Music Challenge. They had a ring to them.
Merry Christmas.