Aurora by ion

Aurora is a collection of ambient soundscapes I originally put together in the Autumn of 2009 for Gordon MacMillan’s Mysterious Semblance show, a programme dedicated to ambient music that ran on the Stillstream service.

Gordon’s brief was for two hours of mostly unreleased, original ambient music. I quickly put together various pieces left over from past recording campaigns going back to the original Tranquility Bass sessions in 1995, and combined those with music recorded for Ion's debut release, Future Forever. Once assembled, I had a collection of tracks that sounded pretty good.

That said, once the show had aired, I pretty much forgot all about it and the programme drifted off into the ether. There was just too much other stuff going on at the time I guess.

In the winter of 2022, I found an incomplete set of backup files on an old hard drive and, whilst most of those backup files had been corrupted, I was at least able to recover the original running order. With the running order in place, I soon figured out that I could re-assemble the original session more or less as broadcast.

I started work on the restoration in February 2023 using a hacked about Silicon Graphics Indy workstation to import audio files that my Tascam DA30 DAT machine would no longer recognise. Alas, two of the original pieces were too badly damaged to be recovered so I left them out. Others suffered from distortion or serious drop-outs. I’ve tried my best to hide the worst examples although I left some in because to do otherwise would have detracted from the end result.

However, by the time I’d finished the first revision, I’d discovered that Gordon was seriously ill. I didn’t want to affect his recovery so I put the project on the back burner until he was well again. Alas, Gordon died in August, before I had a chance to complete the second revision. He never got to hear it.

So, here’s Aurora. It’s an ambient album in three parts, each with a flavour and character of its own. There's little or no structure here so it's a world away from the usual thrash-a-thon and, at ninety three minutes, this is my longest album yet.

Normally, at this point, I’d include a track listing but I’d rather let you, the listener, discover which pieces are fresh and new, and which pieces are recycled from earlier works.

The emphasis has been ambient music right from the start and Aurora consists mostly of tuneless, formless sound collages. However, there are a few recognisable elements - The Journey Home is presented more or less in its original form, as is the live version of Chromium Dark.

There are unreleased tracks from T-Bass (The Infection of Time, The Fabulous Neutrinos), SkinMechanix (The Secret Life of Angels, Fallen Angel) and Ion (Future Forever). I lifted several sections from the compilation disc, Mediaevil and later threw in some work-in-progress pieces from Farscape, which should have been the second Ion album. These tracks were later augmented with one or two sketches and ideas that didn’t make it to any of those albums. I could have added a few more but the album was already starting to become unmanageable.

Here's the important bit : any monies earned from the sale of Aurora will be gifted to the MacMillan Cancer Fund.

I hope you enjoy this release as much as I did. In many ways, it was like revisiting an old familiar house, perhaps playing with old familiar toys and remembering dreams from another time. Strangely comforting and yet...

Best wishes,
David
August 2024
Revised December 2024

Thinking Metal Music was established in 1995 by composer David James Hughes, which means that 2025 is the thirtieth anniversary of the label's founding.

Expect plenty of new releases in this very special year.

thinkingmetal.co.uk