Album Notes

Themes 1-50 could be viewed as an audio diary of sorts, taking you on a sometimes chaotic, often surprising journey through the London underground, acoustic to electronic, major to minor and 2005 to the present. With no pauses and no breaths they cater for even the shortest of attention spans, yet contain more microcosmic details than your bedroom floor.

Each theme is at most just a few bars long (the original hand written manuscript is included with the recording) and recorded for as long as Dan saw fit before moving straight onto the next, with little or no regard for changes in tempo, texture, timbre or dynamics.

The result is a striking 54 minute soundtrack made completely linearly over a two year period that covers a wide range of sounds, styles and moods, logging Dan’s interests and concerns as they change and develop.

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A very long Biography:

After 2005’s almost dance friendly Follow up Treatment Dan embarked on the hugely ambitious linear project that came to be Themes 1-50. Drawing on even more influences than before; years of playing guitar in rock, metal and pop(ish) bands, recording home demos with a dodgy keyboard, a handful of stomp-boxes, a mic and tape recorder and the move toward a deeper experimentation all hold a strong bearing on Dan’s current way of working.

These extended jam sessions as a teenager, along with a passion for song writing led to Dan’s first album End of the Sonic. Although only recorded on 4 track tape, 2001’s End of the Sonic showed a 17 year olds unwavering representation of a progressive blend of the music he loved, heavily featuring vocals and co-writing from Oliver Whitefield, among others.

Two four track EP’s followed this debut album, both in 2003; Resensitized, a heavy collaboration with Oliver Whitefield opening with a reworking of the final song from End of the Sonic called Candlewick Boys & Matchstick Girls and the electronic Electrolysis. This second EP was Dan’s first real foray into instrumental (and electronic) music and offered a new level of intricacy with large arrangements, unusual textures and less of the rules associated with music of a ‘song’ nature.

Electrolysis set the stage for a full-length instrumental electronic album that would delve further into the unorthodox. Follow up Treatment proved to be quirky and unorthodox yet catchy at the same time. Some of the conceptual elements, surprising twists and homemade sounds of Follow up Treatment gelled well with Dan’s need for a new larger project and so work began on Themes 1-50.