Axis Mundi is a musical project born of the belief that achieving some measure of success in one creative field should fund the ongoing abuse of another. Over the last several years I've accumulated enough gear for a relatively small but well-equipped home studio.

While I like melodic material, and do tinker with that, I'm also hugely interested in sound design and works that emerge out of a process that I've heard called "painting with sound." Or, to use a term coined by pioneering synthesist Steve Roach, creating "soundworlds."

If you want shiny, happy dance music or singer/songwriter earnestness, this is not the place for you.

Check back every now and then. I'll probably rotate various pieces in and out.

Extract (Soundtrack) Put the voice tracks and another thing or two on mute, and what have you got? The sonic tapestry behind the audio story “Extract,” with a quick little homage to John Carpenter added to the low, extended fade-out. (6.3 MB)

Inconspicuous Consumption The tabloid edition tale of German Internet cannibal Armin Meiwes and his late, delicious friend. I tried using a few brighter sounds, really, I did … it just didn’t work. The thing genuinely seemed to want to be dank and grimy, like a transmission beamed in from the radio equivalent of Videodrome. Most audio clips were nicked from the BBC, with a special appearance by my friend J.P. McLaughlin as the voice of Armin, in his own translated words. (6.8 MB)

The Last Primal Dawn A brief layer of a brand new, much longer, track, “Megalith” … but when I listened to it out of context, it seemed hauntingly complete on its own, too. In my sampler, I created an ensemble of ancient horns – alpenhorn, midwinterhorn, and two versions of a Rkang Gling — then played them in one line at a time. (1.6 MB)

There's a good amount of very low- and high-frequency data in these - not always the kind of material best handled by small computer speakers and the MP3 format, however convenient it may be. If you find you're getting pops or crackles, turn off any EQ presets or sound enhancers, which can sometimes cause distortion.