Ambient music can create a soothing soundscape, using electronic instruments like synthesisers. It was popularised by musicians like Brian Eno, Jean Michel Jarre and Art of Noise. There are many sub-genres. Stellardrone’s music has been described as space-ambient which conjures up images of outer space. He uses interesting melodies, musical structures, effects and sounds.
READERSVOICE.COM: What are some of your favorite books and magazines, whether about music or anything else?
STELLARDRONE: Between ages 10 and 17 I read hundreds of science fiction novels but I forgot the names of the best ones.
Some of my favourite authors were Robert Sheckley, Harry Harrison, Brian Aldiss, Colin Wilson, Isaac Asimov, Douglas Adams and Ray Bradbury. I liked most of Stephen King‘s stuff too. I was an avid reader back then.
RV: I liked the video to Lights in the Sky from your 2011 Stellardrone album A Moment of Stillness. Do you enjoy making videos or putting them together, or would you prefer to stick to the music and let someone else make the videos?
SD: I just got the idea and somehow managed to quickly convert it into a short video, but I never liked making videos, it’s just not my thing.
RV: On your Facebook page you said you made Air Glow, from your new Light Years album, after an idea had haunted you for a couple of weeks. What sort of idea was it?
SD: What I meant, was that I couldn’t come up with full length track at that time, so I had only short excerpts/loops of my original work. But one night inspiration struck and I finished it. Ideas are just abstract melodies in my head that I hadn’t yet converted into digital material.
RV: You added a clip of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey to a remix by Aaron Marshall of your piece Stardome. What are some of your favorite sci-fi movies?
SD: I love watching science fiction films. I do not put them into categories (independent or mainstream) and watch everything that brings me awe. I read Space Odyssey when I was 13 or 14 and I liked it very much, but I didn’t get the Kubrick’s film from first viewing, only after the second or third viewing I started to appreciate it as one of the best sci-fi films of all time. However, my favourites are Carpenter’s The Thing, first Alien film, Matrix trilogy, Oblivion, Looper, Dark City, Carpenter’s Dark Star, Sunshine, both versions of Solaris and Tarkovsky’s Stalker. There are much more that I forgot, of course.
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– copyright Simon Sandall
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