Following on from Lightfields (2010), and his collection of ambient works ‘And All Is As It Should Be’(2012), British electronic producer Adam Fielding’s is set to return to Distinctive with a new album titled ‘Icarus’. As ever, Fielding’s productions are rich with drama, space and intention. His work always carries a distinctly cinematic narrative; a trait that’s picked up by the film production houses that regularly champion his work.
Opening the album is the title track and first single off the album. It’s a vocal opus charged with breathy pads, smart string arrangements and snappy beats. ‘Fireworks’ is a powerful follow-on, with an undulating synth bass line and expansive tonal work.
For ‘Are Lights Approaching’, he takes a thumping 4×4 beat and envelops it in his signature textures, topping it off with an edgy vocal delivery that gives a raw, low-slung feel. Next up, ‘All We Ever Wanted’ introduces some acoustic guitar tones and yearning lyrics to the mix to create a haunting ballad.
‘Somewhere Out There’ is an ambient piece, just vocals and ethereal pads on this one that builds to a cathartic end. ‘Hiding From January’ is purely instrumental, showcasing Fielding’s intricate beat programming skills. Next, we have ‘Out of Reach’. It’s a propulsive stomper with a darker, industrial space-age feel. Fielding’s effected vocals adding to the crystalline finish.
‘High Rise Downfall’ uses a forceful broken beat pattern to punctuate beautiful synthetic atmospheres before some warm piano and guitar chords kick in to switch the vibe. ‘Break Me Down’ carries on the piano themes,this time paired with dynamic ‘rock-esque’ beats and chord progressions to make one of the album’s proper epics.
‘A Fire In The Sky’ is a moody and contemplative, acting as the level-setting precursor to one of the more accomplished vocal tracks on the album, ‘Ashes By Dawn’. Fielding’s vocal takes centre stage here, and it’s nothing short of breathtaking. As a final reprise, he delivers a short yet stunning string arrangement using the movements of the opening ‘Icarus.’ A fitting end to a record.
You can find out more information and listen to previews via the music page on this site, or you can check out the clips from the album below.
Having spent three years working on this album, it’s quite surreal to see it finally making it’s way out into the big wide world. I’d like to say a massive thank you to everyone I’ve been pestering over the past few years with constant revisions, ideas and general nonsense, and of course thank you to everyone who has ever supported me and my music throughout the years. Without you this album would simply not have been possible.
You can read a bit more about the background and creation of Icarus via the music page. You can also find full album lyrics via the lyrics section of this site.
I’d absolutely love to know what you think of this album, as I mentioned – I couldn’t be happier with how it all turned out, and as a piece of work I think it perfectly highlights more or less entirely what I’m about as a musician.
Just a quick update to let you know that, yes, the full-length Icarus release is now only six days away, and also that I’ll be doing an AMA over on Reddit on the 1st May at 1600 EDT (that’s 9pm UK time, I believe). That gives you a good couple of days to check out Icarus, and ask me all kinds of awkward questions related to it. Or not! That’s why it’s called “ask me anything“, after all.
So… if you’ve ever had a burning desire to ask me a question, music related or not, there’s your chance! Looking forward to seeing you there.
Adam Fielding is back with us once again at Distinctive, this time with his latest single ‘Icarus’. Delivering nothing short of beauty, Mr Fielding brings what he does best to the table and we know you’re going to love it. Icarus opens with an instant wave of atmophere that straps you into position for the ride the is about to unfold infront of you. Lighthearted break beat carries through and is joined by elegant keys and strings that build and retreat into majestic peaks and breakdowns, the descriptive vocal floats through the track with a masterfully balanced contrast of ambience, dark bass lines and synth work – a light vs dark element and a great example to the mind of Fielding.
The 06R remix comes at the track with a larger lease on atmosphere, keeping the break beat vibe but going towards a more progressive almost Hybrid esque twist, the remix has more of a dancefloor edge and less outerspace flavour around it. Utilising those powerful strings and entrancing vocal it proves to be a meaty remix!
Blanka is up next and the duo of Adam White & Adam Dowling (Lost Language veterans)do what they do best and have created a big trance remix, fast flowing melodies derived from those awesome strings roll against the darker bass lines you hear in the original mix but with more of a focus point on that underlying thump from the bass line.
OhmFat relaxes the fringe with his remix, creating a very laid back; downtempo mix that has got sunshine groover written all over it. A new melodic bass line becomes the prominent factor whilst OhmFat takes little snippets and elements of the big room atmosphere and weaves them through the background of the mix. Definitely one for an Ibiza beach.
Chevy One tears up the rule book with his remix, the hour of ambience is gone and now comes the day of punchy progressive electro. The no fuss mix pumps out a dirty electro bass line that becomes very entrancing through its repetition. A great and unique take on the single.
The eponymous single from my upcoming album, Icarus, is out now! With a heavy breaks-inspired flavour, the original mix sets the stage for the rest of the album with a delicate mix of organic and electronic instrumentation, featuring strings performed by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.
After a long wait, I’m proud to announce that my third full-length original album Icarus is out in just under four weeks! This is preceded by the release of the first single from the album, Icarus. The single features the title track along with five remixes, spanning a wide range of genres from breaks through to house along with a film-score inspired take on the track. Both the single and album feature the incredible talents of The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.
The album follows the same genre-spanning trend as the single and my previous albums, drawing inspiration from rock, classical, breaks, synth-pop, ambient and various other forms of electronic music. Spanning twelve tracks and clocking in at just under seventy minutes, it’s a rather epic musical journey that I am particularly proud of. With it being the culmination of just under three years worth of preparation, writing, performance and production, I am incredibly excited to finally have this chance to share it with you all.
The album will be released in both digital and physical formats. Full album lyrics and detailed information will be available from this site following the release of the album.
As you may or may not be aware, today is my birthday. Happy Birthday to me!
This time last year I figured I’d release a bunch of out-takes from the writing & recording sessions for Distant Activity (Background Activity). This year I thought I’d try something different and, as a result, I present to you the complete instrumental versions of Distant Activityand Lightfields!
I’m sure some of you may be wondering why exactly I’m doing this, and the simple answer is because a few people asked for it and, after much deliberation, I figured… why not? With Icarus right around the corner – not long to go now! – I thought now would be a great time to look back and get everything out there as far as my first two albums are concerned, ready for the third big one. I must admit that listening to both albums sans-vocals is quite an interesting experience, personally speaking.
You can check out both instrumental albums (along with most of my back catalogue) on my Bandcamp page.
As you may or may not know, a couple of months ago I did a live on-line stream for Propellerhead Software‘s Music Making Month, detailing how to do some quick percussive sequencing in an unusual time signature. Since then I’ve been meaning to get some more tutorials put together, and I finally decided to put something together detailing how to create tribal/cinematic percussion from scratch using Reason‘s Kong device.
The video guides you through creating a multi-layered Kong section featuring some organic sounding cinematic drums, right from setting up the sequencer lanes through to programming the drums & sequencing a short section in about 15 minutes. I’d love to know what you make of it, and I’d be really interested to hear any music written using the principles showed in this video. I’ve got a couple of ideas for some future videos but I’m totally open to suggestions!
If you’d like to check out the finished Kong sequence in Reason 6.5, you can download it from here. You can also check out the track featured towards the start of the video (which makes use of the principles showed here) below.
My third full-length, original solo album Icarus is due to be released on April 29th, with the eponymous single to be released a week before on the 15th. The single features a slew of remixes covering a wide variety of styles and genres both by myself and a hearty band of talented remixers.
I really can’t wait to share this with you… it’s been a long time coming and a hell of a lot of work from myself and a sizeable selection of other people (including The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, no less). I recently had the single masters back and, I’ve got to say, I’m really, really happy with how it’s all turned out. Of particular note for any audiophiles reading this – the final masters are sounding fantastic, and should come as a welcome relief to anybody out there (like myself) who’s sick of listening to excellent music that’s been mauled thanks to a constant push to over-compress and squash the living hell out of the source material in an effort to make it sound as loud as possible. As a record, Icarus is not that kind of listen and, as such, I’m very keen for it to withstand repeated listens.
I’m currently working with the label on the artwork and I’m looking forward to being able to hold the finished album in the not-too-distant future. I plan on talking in great length about the album both thematically and production-wise, but it’s still a little way off release so all I’ll say for now is that for fans of well produced electronic music with a heavy emphasis on emotion, melody and narrative I genuinely believe that it’s been worth the wait.
On a non-Icarus related note – I’ve just realised that I haven’t updated this site since the end of last year, so I guess now is as (in)appropriate time as any to say a hearty – albeit massively belated – Happy New Year!
2012 was a bit of a turning point for myself as a musician, particularly in terms of focus and direction. I’ve been working on a couple of production music (music for TV, advertising, film etc.) projects so far this year along with another project that I’m excited to have been a part of, which I’ll explain in more detail as things progress.
Something I do plan on doing this year is collaborating with more musicians. I have plenty of ideas in mind, and this idea was more or less spurred on by a collaboration between myself and the inimitable Tom Pritchard toward the end of last year which you can listen to and download for free below.
It’s been a long time since I worked on a proper collaboration, and I think I’ve progressed a fair bit as a musician and as a person since my last attempts. I’d love to know what you make of this particular collaboration! Please, no collaboration requests… as I said, I’ve already got a few ideas myself.
I can’t believe I’ve left it so long since I last updated this site – as I’ve said before, that’s normally a good sign and this is no exception. I’ve got some great news.
Album 3 has a name, one confirmed single and is – more or less – complete!
My next full-length album is called Icarus, and it pretty much encapsulates everything I find enjoyable about modern electronic music – full of absorbing, interesting textures, detailed sound manipulation and – most important to me – solid tunes and genuine emotion. If you’re into hyper-compressed, aggressive-for-the-sake-of-being-aggressive, substance-over-style throw-away tunes then I’d strongly suggest looking elsewhere. But if you’re into genre-crossing music with a heavy organic edge that rewards repeated listening you’re going to be in for an absolute treat. The composition and production of the album itself is more or less complete and, having been working on it for so long, I must say that it’s a strange feeling to know that it’s finished. Well, I say “finished” – there’s still plenty of work to be done on the actual release-side!
The first single from Icarus will be the title track. The Icarus single will feature a wide variety of remixes from some incredibly talented musicians and myself. It’s due out in Q1 of next year, and I’ll be providing further updates regarding the single and the album itself as the release dates draws closer.
Also… just to settle some confusion: For those wondering why I keep referring to my upcoming album as my “third album” despite And All Is As It Should Be being, technically, my third artist album… that’s simply because this is my third full-length album of completely original material. AAIAISB was completely new material, though a good chunk of it consisted of re-interpretations of older works. I’m no less happy with it as an album than my other full-length releases – far from it! In fact, I put most of it together around this time last year and, as such, the album itself goes remarkably well with the current UK climate… the nights are drawing in, the frost and bitter cold is taking hold and it’s a great time for some chilled introspection. If you haven’t checked it out already then I’d strongly recommend doing so as it is a rather good accompaniment to this particular season (if I may say so myself!). Another reason I keep referring to Icarus as “album 3″ is simply because, when I started writing it, it was the third album I’d been working on! Needless to say, I’ve been at it for a while.
In addition to all this Icarus-related excitement, I’ve been working on a huge selection of production tunes (for TV, film, advertising, radio – that kind of thing) in the past few months which has, I’m pleased to say, found a home! If you’d like to hear one of said production tunes then look no further – here’s a sci-fi/cinematic inspired number called “An Uncertain Future”.
Just to clarify: this is in no way related to Icarus whatsoever, though there are obviously elements of my production music that carry over into my own solo work.
I’ve also been working on some more synth-pop inspired music lately which is, again, completely unrelated to Icarus or my production music. There’s a track up on my Soundcloud page called “There Is No Turning Back” which should give you a good idea as to what I’m going for but, again, I’ll be providing more information as this project develops. Stay tuned!
I’ve been working with Nucleus SoundLab once again on a new Refill for Reason – this time based on FXpansion’s hugely popular BFD soundbanks.
BFD Core is a hugely detailed acoustic drum library for Reason. The Refill itself consists of over 3.6gb of sample content which make up 57 individual kit-pieces featuring multiple mic positions and detailed velocity layers. The Refill itself also includes 75 Combinator drum kits (including 18 of mine), with lite patches also included for low RAM systems. The Refill also includes 2200 MIDI files if you’re in need of some quick percussive inspiration.
I always think that the true test of a sample library such as this is in it’s real world application, and – having used it myself on a recent project – I can safely say that it sounds excellent. The out-of-the-box patches sound great, and the customisability offered by simply diving into the Combinator patches is excellent.
Right now the Refill is priced at a very reasonable introductory price of $69 until 5th December 2012. Check it out!
I was without a reliable internet connection, my laptop was on the fritz and I was about to start my final year at university. I’m not going to lie – as far as release schedules go, I’ve had better.
It was a completely new and alien experience to me… at the time, I had been releasing music freely on-line for a good 5 or 6 years (not including my late-90s/early-00s tracker output which was, to be kind to it, pretty horrible), and I had never released such a large collection of music that was supposed to flow together as one cohesive whole. Then there’s the whole “releasing an album independently” angle which, more or less, came about after an exasperating couple of months in which I sent the album out to a load of indie labels and heard absolutely nothing back. Not a peep. Well, except for Magnatune.
Thankfully, Magnatune were on board right from the start and, with Magnatune on board and some serious consideration, I knew that it was probably the right time to risk a completely independent release. Unfortunately, things took a bit longer to get together than I’d expected and by the time I actually got around to releasing the album, I was about to start my final year at university. Could have been worse – if I’d tried releasing it a month later then I really would have really been screwed!
Distant Activity was a learning experience like no other, and – while the actual writing and production of the album wasn’t always exactly… pleasant – I have fond memories of finishing this album and the immense sense of pride that came with releasing something so personal into the wild. I never expected for a minute that so many people would connect with it in such a profound way, and I couldn’t be happier with how everything turned out.
