Andrey Klimkovsky is a Russian composer working in the electronic music space. Musical images he created — «Music of Celestial Spheres», «Starry Sky», «ALEALA» and «DreamOcean» have become classics of the genre, gaining fame both in Russia and abroad. The musician regularly gives spectacular live concerts and collaborates with many other representatives of the Russian electronic scene, leads a popular community about synthesizers and workstations, participates in astronomical expeditions and practices a healthy lifestyle.
The final composition from the «Star triangle» album
By the way, just today and right now - on the night of August 30-31, is the “Last Night of August”. This year it coincided with the supermoon ("Blue Moon", as it is sometimes called - when two supermoons in a row) and on this night we had a conjunction of Saturn with the Moon - right during its opposition. Amazing picture...
By the way, year after year I have always intended to make a video for this tune and publish it on the last night of August. Finally it happened. True, in the video the night is completely moonless, but that's what makes it good - the last August night (in the classical sense of this metaphor), that nothing prevents the shining of stars in the black August sky. Supermoons come and go, but the image of the dark starry sky of August remains.
I and James Hill — American jazz trumpeter — spent some time choosing a piece for our next recording together. It must be said that electronic music is specific, and classical jazz instrumentation cannot be easily used everywhere. But the «Song of the Setting Sun», it would seem, itself asked for the brass section - its leading timbre was an electronic imitation of brass, and the trumpet is very much in tune with brass. In addition, this work is marine, and the trumpet is probably the most marine instrument in terms of its energy.
James recorded the trumpet part very quickly and accurately in his TCAB Studio, and sent me the record. I, as usual, could not refuse to make some adjustments to the overall mix, and suddenly realized that the work needed to be completely remixed — it's 2023, and you can't leave the sound of 20 years ago.
I disassembled the composition into parts, digitized them again, even added another new one part to them, and connected everything in a way that I could not do before. And besides, a completely new Sea now sounds here.
You can compare versions. In the Youtube channel of James Hill sounds the very first — traditional — version of the «Song of the Setting Sun»:
There is a new version of the work on my channel, and a slightly different sounding trumpet. And the video was created with the participation of the BlueWillow neural network.
Friends, you can subscribe to James Hill's Youtube channel:
Unexpected collaboration with American jazz trumpeter James Hill.
Nothing foreshadowed such a turn of events. I just wrote a review of one of the experimental electronic albums of a musician I know from the social network Facebook. In that album, a completely divine trumpet sounded, from the voice of which I shed tears, and began to search the network for this trumpeter, who, like God, is able to breathe soul into everything created on Earth, and make it heavenly.
To my own surprise, I soon received a comment from James Hill on an earlier version of this composition. James liked it and would like to record a trumpet part for this tune. And a day later I was already listening to the beta-version. All I had to do was balance the mix and in the meantime James made a video version.
Friends, I can't listen to James play without emotions and tears. I am sure that voices of the trumpet and the feelings invested in them will not leave you indifferent either.
Many thanks to James for collaboration and such an unexpected surprise.
These are pictures from a recently published video about "Blue Moon". But it is these frames that are not in the video - the images were created later, and they have two additional figures of constellations, which, as it seemed to me after the publication of the video, were somewhat lacking.
Friends, you can guess which figures of constellations are added here.
The starry sky in this scene is taken from the Bryce 3D program and slightly fixed - some stars were initially out of place.
The Moon is borrowed from the Stellarium program and is set approximately on the date October 26, 2023.
Figures of constellations are from the stellar atlas of Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius — "Uranographia".
And everything is put together again in the Bryce 3D program. Mountains and trees are a typical "Brycean" implementation of fractal geometry.
This 3-minute episode corresponds approximately to the 12th lunar day... or is it more correct to say — to the 12th lunar night?
This is closer to the truth, because the melody has a "nightly" name.
When I gave the play a name, I proceeded from my own associations that had developed over hundreds of observational nights. Despite the fact that the Moon in our minds is strongly associated with yellowish hues (which is quite reasonable), near the full moon, the Moon can cause the illusion of a blue glow. this is especially noticeable in cities where street lighting is most often orange — much yellower than the Moon. And in contrast to this difference, the Moon itself, and everything that it illuminates in the sky, begins to appear blue to our eyes. There was even such a term "Blue Moon". But when this music was created, it was practically not used. Now (perhaps) I would call the work differently — «Night of the Blue Moon». But it's too late to change the name of this melody.
Friends, the album of the «NGC» project — «Phantom galaxy» — is entirely uploaded on YouTube. And this time it's not just a picture with music — it's a dynamic image born from the cover design that lives and breathes, and you can look at it as long as this music sounds.
Welcome to an intergalactic journey to the «Phantom galaxy» NGC 628 in the Pisces constellation:
It's not hard to guess which album this visualization is from. «Pisces» is the sixth album in the Starry Sky project, dedicated to the constellation of the same name. And "Celestial Pisces" is the second track from this album - you can find it in its entirety at the links below:
A variety of technologies and sources of inspiration are mixed here. The result is somewhat unexpected for me. It was hard to imagine what would happen if we combined star maps from the Stellarium program, celestial-underwater abstractions drawn by the Midjourney neural network, romantic images from the old-world stellar atlas by Johannes Hevelius and a photographic survey of the sky SIMBAD. By the way, the innovative DaVinci Resolve platform helped to mount all this - this is the best thing I have touched in working with video. But this clip, of course, is largely experimental.
This tune is presented in the maxi-single «Song of the setting sun», released in 2005, and it sounds only there - it is not present in any album (this was not supposed to be - this is an exclusive track specially written for the single). Nevertheless, the melody turned out to be memorable, touching something in the depths of the soul. And it needed a video-version for a long time.
This footage was created using the BlueWillow neural network. It is hardly worth considering it as an unambiguous correspondence to music - it turned out that modern artificial intelligence very easily reacts to seascapes in the context of sunsets and sunrises, but it is not so easy to convince it to do something close to the night element. As a result, it was decided to leave the dawn-sunset design, which is quite in tune with the entire maxi-single «Song of the setting sun».
By the way, if one of you, my listeners, missed this release, it's not too late to get to know it and even make friends:
This music continues to fill me with faith in the best for almost two decades. And the longer I listen to it, the more I realize that I am not quite its author, but maybe a guide.
As it turned out, few people saw this video. Although, it should have been the other way around — the video appeared at the very beginning of the COVID-19 quarantine — sit and watch — you don’t need to go anywhere, you don’t need to do anything. But people were not at all up to it — people were drowning in fears — in front of the disease and in front of the uncertainty in the future of mankind. But the music is about fearlessness. And it did not sound in unison with what was happening, but rather even in dissonance with our emotions and mental activity.
But still, the music came at the right time. And in general, all the keys are given to us a little earlier than the moment at which we already know where to insert them, what to open, and what is there behind the door.
And behind the door — a new world. It will be happy if we allow ourselves to perceive it as such. And it will be extremely cruel if we do not accept the changes.
A melody you might have missed. This is understandable, because it was released only in a single-version — in the tracklist of the maxi-single «In spite of laws», and then was not repeated in any albums (this was not planned) — then I just decided to make an exclusive track for the single.
Meanwhile, for myself, this Tune turned out to be very valuable, and I have long wanted to make some kind of video clip for it. This was possible when neural networks became available that generate visual content on query. To create this video, I used the BlueWillow neural network — a free analogue of the Midjourney neural network. This net is lighter, but coped with the task. And now one of my best tunes has a video version. By the way, I was not too lazy to tweak the sound a little more.
I am not a fan of direct and unambiguous images. And in music they have no place at all — not a single musical message imitates exactly the sound of the phenomenon that it reveals. And if it comes to something that in the usual sense for us does not sound at all, then a special approach is required — both in music and in the accompanying video, if any.
For the composition «Starry Depth» video accompaniment has long been requested and required. But what it to make from? — to collect a bunch of photos of the Edwin Hubble Space Telescope again? — this has happened many times already. I had to turn to the Midjourney neural network for unique material. And the neural network willingly shared its vision.
This is how — just 10 months after the release of «Delphinus» album — a video was formed for one of his melodies, which could not have been created at the time of the album's release (in any case, I was far from these technologies then, and neural networks, of course, already existed).
The music itself has its origins even earlier. This probably needs to be reminded (I once wrote, but not everyone read it, but someone may have already forgotten). One winter — more snowier and windier than this winter — I was returning home from the center of Moscow by running through a heavy snowstorm — at night, as usual. The sidewalks were covered up to the knee, the wind was in my face, my eyes were clogged with snow, and I could hardly see the way. Stiff, exhausted, got barely alive, but when I got home, the first thing I did was turn on the synthesizer and play a new Melody — she overtook me in that blizzard. I did not know then for which album, but later she herself asked for an album about Delphinus constellation.
If someone hasn't heard this album yet, listen to it in its entirety — it's worth it.
