Synoiz Music Blog
Synoiz music blog.
Posted 11th November 2011
Today was weird for me, I pondered for a while whether I should do something special for 11/11/11 but in the end I decided I've got enough to promote at the moment without throwing another free track/release or such out there. Plus considering what day it is today in England would make any "oh look at the date!!!11" celebration seem crude.
Today was/is Remembrance Day which marks the official end of the first World War. For a lot of people including myself it also ties in with those who fought in World War II also. We marked it today by having a two minute silence at 11:00am and while it felt a bit like a ritual at the time, it kinda made me wonder.
I have great respect for those who fought in the two World Wars, the stakes were high and the conditions were dreadful. All those people who were drafted in and I really can't conceive (in my wonderfully sheltered suburban life) the horror of being forced to go to war when you don't really want to and getting killed or maimed, the nightmare for the family back home, knowing that their loved one might not come back and there was never a choice there to make.
What Remembrance Day this year has made me consider is how I feel about modern wars and what's happening in Afghanistan and Iraq and now Libya. This may upset a few people but over the past few years I've found myself having little to no respect for soldiers involved in these wars, I've not given to charities such as "help the heroes" simply because the soldiers I class as heroes are those from World War I and World War II and even their grandkids are old enough to not need support now I suspect.
Why this big divide? For me the main difference is the element of choice. Do "heroes" choose to go to war? I'd say no but I guess they do, well in fairy tales and stories anyway. In real life I would say that the only time something needs to be done is when there isn't a choice or that the other choice is so wrong to be inconsiderable, that's the definition of "need" really isn't it? I don't see any of the current wars as that, I see them as fragile, pointless and horrifying.
I guess what it all comes down to is whether the current wars needed to happen, and when a lot of the evidence for them can be considered as suspect (World Trade Center detonations, "terrorism" groups, Weapons of Mass Destruction that don't seem to have existed, no evidence of Osama Bin Laden being killed etc) you have to wonder who are the aggressors in these wars. If that ever was the case, if the UK and the United States are the "bad guys" then what does that make the soldiers that are fighting in them? Puppets? Murderers? This is what has made things so difficult in my mind for so long, if the soldiers make a choice to go to war but the information they have to base that decision on is suspect, does it dissolve their actions? It goes back to that old line I remember my mum saying a lot whenever a friend would make me join in on some stupid activity, "oh well if he told you to jump off a bridge would you?".
But what I realised today is another side that I hadn't considered really, is it bravery? Is it a trait so pure and amazing and selfless that these troops are willing to offer up their lives in order to do what they think is right? Even if it might not be and the evidence is all lies, does that stop the troops being any less courageous if they're truly doing it in their minds for Queen and country, for what the same people fought for in World Wars 1 and 2?
Today made me wonder if in my cynical mind there's no space to conceive traits like bravery or nobility, but at the same time, in a logical world there can never be good or evil - just shades of grey with outcomes in a scale of preferable to non-preferable.
I guess for me, I can never make a decision without first considering it from every angle, I've always been like this, I'm a nightmare with a restaurant menu as I factor in things like "how full will I be later?" "will it take longer to make than everyone elses?" "too expensive" "Portion might be rubbish" etc, so it makes me feel odd towards anyone who could just believe what they're told without looking into it any further (in all fairness I'd probably envy them more than anything!).
A lot of the people I know who are in the armed forces fall into three main categories for me,
- Those who genuinely believe the job needs doing.
- Those who want the money/benefits and can't do other work.
- Those who just want to "kill some darkies" (not my words).
Worryingly this third category seems to be commonplace due to racial tensions especially around the north east of England where I'm from. When you know people like this, people who probably weren't sure what to do with their lives after they stopped being the high school bully or the nerd needing to prove himself a man, it becomes hard to feel the same way about those fighting in modern wars as one does about those who died in World Wars I and II. Is this purely because those older wars are now legend? That their participants are immortalised as caricatures, good Englishmen and bad Nazis as the details of those involved fade away? Or is it like I said before, because of choice, or because they were in the army already and chose not to leave?
I hope I haven't upset people with my rambling here but it's just what I've been considering during the day. What are your thoughts and feelings? You can post them using the comments thingy below. Don't just flame me if you don't agree but please put forward your opposing point of view in as much detail as you can. Have I gotten this totally wrong? Is there even a right answer do you think?
Posted 28th October 2011
Well as someone pointed out, I totally failed to update this blog on Sunday. There will be news of the Cutting Edge Film Festival soon but for the moment I'm just getting excited about Halloween!
Free Shock! Horror! single still available
I can't believe it's been an entire year since the release of my single Shock! Horror! If you missed it or are just finding Synoiz now then check out the creepy horror music video by 12 FT Beast Productions by clicking on the animation to the side and click here to grab the 4-track free horror music download Shock! Horror!.
At the moment I have two main projects on the go, one is completing the main theme/intro music for a creepy game soundtrack for a publisher proposal and the other is remixing the new Erasure single "I Lose Myself" (which isn't really work as it's for a competition but it'd be amazing to get a remix on an Erasure release!).
How is everyone doing for Halloween? Looking forward to it? Costume sorted? Been out already?
Posted 21st October 2011
Hello again!
It's been bloody ages since I wrote a blog, it's that typical thing that whenever you have stuff that people might actually be interested in, you're too busy to write it down. Well the main thing I'd like to point out is OMGNEWBLOODYWEBSITE, hope you like it, tell me what you think in the comments section below.
So what have I been up to? Well I've done a few remixes and also a few horror film soundtracks, the first is a mad industrial electro one for the still-photography short "Nightmares", another more atmospheric spooky one for the film "The Dark Passenger" by Lee Bibby, and some currently unreleased music of mine has been used to score a TV pilot/short film called "Freakarama" (which is INSANE but strangely watchable!).
In addition to this I've played lead acting roles in two independent films, one being The Dark Passenger mentioned above (the things I'll do for a soundtrack gig eh?) and the other being the amazing Le Belle Dame Sans Merci written by Phillip Michael Buchan and directed by Antoni McVay from Mitsuko Studios.
I -think- all of these films are going to be shown at a local film festival in Newcastle upon Tyne sometime next month but that's a pretty major event so I'm gonna dedicate a whole blog to that sometime later.
There's lots more to tell you but I'll sit down on Sunday maybe and write that out for you, hope you're all well, thanks for being fans of Synoiz!
Posted 6th February 2011
Hello there chaps and chappesses,
I don't think I've done a blog or mail out in a while but I thought I'd tell you about an important release that's out today.
COMMITTAL - The new single by Instant Pyrolysis (Featuring remixes by Synoiz and Nors'Klh)
Can you see why I'm mentioning this now? :D
This is something I got asked to do a few months back and due to other commitments I ended up leaving it quite late and so (coupled with the new track I was writing for the upcoming Remember Chernobyl charity compilation) I had most of my December working for Adrien from Ambientaria records! The single "Committal" is a really interesting dark ambient piece as it's a track that tells a story of wrongful (or is it?) incarceration through oppressive bass and low piano motifs coupled with some dramatic and at times creepy spoken & operatic vocals from singer Marionita Paige.
You can check out the mini-site for Committal to listen to both a sample of the track and to buy the digital download for only €2 EUR. Considering you get 3-tracks including remixes by both me and Nors'Klh it's well worth the price and your money goes direct to both the artist, the singer and Ambientaria records who are proving a great help in getting a lot more dark ambient artists noticed out there.
Posted 7th December 2010
Hello there! It's been a little while hasn't it? Thanks to everyone who has downloaded a copy of the free Halloween single Shock! Horror! from my website, I'm so pleased with how it has done. It's become my most watched/tweeted/reviewed/downloaded single yet which makes me very happy. Is everyone doing okay with all this snow? It's bloody terrible up north here in England, totally snowed out!
Due to being a bit overworked I decided to take November easy so I set myself no targets and deadlines and just had a bit of a rest (even found the time to play some Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles and get back to Wii Fit!). Now it's December I'm back into the thick of it and have loads of stuff to do.
At the weekend I was with Ewan McNulty from Ragnarok Radio recording some guest vocals for his own project "Darker With The Day" which hopefully should see the light of day sometime early next year. On Friday I recorded some backing vocals for Preston Reset's remix of my track "Getting Safer" for the upcoming Darkling EP.
For the rest of the month I'm going to be working on my own remix for the Darkling EP (it's still not finished), a special remix for the upcoming single release of "Committal" from Instant Pyrolysis as well as a brand new dark ambient track for inclusion on the Chernobyl 25th anniversary compilation that is being released by Ambientaria Records next year.
What else is there? Oh yes, I've been chatting to a group of North East filmmakers about the possibility of me writing some original music for their upcoming horror film "Nightmares". They've sent me a teaser trailer which uses my track "Shock! Horror!" to great effect, currently I'm not sure if it's public yet so I can't link you up but hopefully this will be another nice little project to be involved in and looks to be a lot of fun.
Phew well that's all I can think of for the moment, hope you're all doing well and thanks to everyone who showed support for the new demos for the next album that I've been posting sporadically on Twitter, if you missed them then you can listen to each of them on the player below:
Hope you like them, more news coming soon I expect, I'm off to Edinburgh tomorrow to get some shopping done for Christmas and visit my brother, See ya!
