Outback Twilight (outback_twilight.it)

 Completed in April 1998.

In early 1998, I had a vision: to make a music disk containing seven songs, each of which contains a song representing each continent. The name of the disk would be “Seven Kingdoms,” inspired by the name of a real-time strategy game that was released around this time (the game had nothing to do with seven continents).

For the continent of Australia, I knew exactly what I needed: a song built around the sound of the didgeridoo. But didgeridoo samples were not exactly easy to find. I asked in the #trax IRC channel. I didn’t make a habit of hanging out on this channel, since half the time I didn’t know what people were talking about. Thankfully, somebody named “Elblanco” in the channel found a link to a didgeridoo sound file and gave it to me. I spent some time in Goldwave making modifications to the file, breaking it into four smaller chunks and using it in my song. It was a time-consuming process and the timing didn’t line up with the tempo of the song.

Unfortunately, the sample was a bit slower than I was hoping for, so it resulted in a slower song - but it was the best I could get. I accompanied it with a panflute sample (originally from "Ascent of the Cloud Eagle" by Necros, and not the first time I used it), piano, and percussion.

The song turned out okay - not my favorite by a long shot, but not terrible. I don’t like how slow I had to make it, and the beat loops don’t quite line up with the didgeridoo. I think the piano is a little half-hearted, too. It doesn’t add much. It’s certainly unique, though. I never made another song quite like it. I think I at least captured the atmosphere I was going for, picturing a starlit evening under the stars in Australia. Of course, I had never actually been to Australia and so I was just relying on my imagination to create the scene.

My music disk never happened - in fact, I never completed a music disk. I only envisioned creating two, this and an earlier one that would have been titled “An Arcturus Christmas.” I think I just never really saw the benefit of releasing songs on a music disk, so my efforts usually fizzled out.

I only completed one other song that definitely would have been included in the music disk: Jungle Trek. This most likely would have been to represent Africa, though it could also be for South America. I later also made a song called Swingshift, which could have represented North America, but I don’t think I intended it to be used for that (I preferred the idea of making a song as a tribute to native Americans, but I never made one).

I wanted the songs on this disk to represent a rich natural or cultural heritage to the continents, so those three songs all could have been good candidates. Swingshift was more of a cultural song, Jungle Trek was more of a natural song, and Outback Twilight was a bit of both. When I asked #trax what I should do to represent Europe, most of the people suggested Eurobeat-style techno. I hated that answer: a style of music that had only existed for about a decade is not what I wanted to use for a song to represent a continent that had been inhabited for thousands of years.
- arcturus