Here we have a interesting relic of how the creative process can mess with you.

My perpetually unfinished magnum opus “Five Themes In Uncertain Times” has been through a lot of variations over the years I’ve been tinkering with it.

Throughout that, I’ve always kept coming back to this original demo, from before I really had more than a vague idea of what I wanted it to be. This was my first experiment with the serialist ideas that album was built on, already at this early stage very similar in fundamental composition to the current forms of “After Work, The Metronomes Unwind” and “The Cadavers’ Pavane” on the present version of the album, but much less orchestrated.

In some ways, the minimalist simplicity of these early versions works for me in a way my later attempts at fuller orchestration didn’t. Somehow, the atmosphere holds up as well with just a few tracks of carefully-chosen synth tones, and I worry the later orchestration was overdone and actually detracts from the piece. It’s almost like, by going with more conventional instrument timbres in the later versions, I caused it to sound more like a slightly weird orchestra or other conventional piece… the orchestral samples evoke other contexts that maybe the pieces really have little enough to do with that it’s a distraction.

This more obviously synthesized electronic demo may be of more limited appeal, as this kind of old-school electronic music is a more niche genre, but it also somehow frees these pieces from the weight of comparisons to more conventional (and in most cases much better-composed and better-orchestrated, because many more people have done it) music.

I don’t know which way the album is ultimately going to go. I may scale the fuller, slightly more conventional current orchestration back towards this more simple electronic sound. Or I may keep it. I don’t know yet. But the appeal of this early demo is undeniable, at least to me. I had some good sonic ideas back then.