Album 5 - Roseanna Angel Lawrence 18th April 2021

My new album of compositions in 2021 is called ‘Cipher Criminal', it’s based around a short story I wrote about a man that writes cipher codes. One could consider the tracks moments in his life. I built the music all around the story and this particular character.

I imagined him as quite obsessive about codes, erratic at times, a little arrogant. Able to evade authorities and create unique ciphers. Ciphers have been used historically and they are very interesting. There are many different methods and types of ciphers, the one on the front cover is the most simplistic cipher type.

I did some psychological research about criminals who wrote codes before I began. It's such a fascinating subject.

I tend to compose around a story and a character on all my albums.

Unlike ‘Lives and Deaths of an Actor,’ in this album there is much more emphasis on drum beats. The actor album had many soaring emotional strings.

Many compositions are orchestral and were composed on music sheets like 'Blackout Days'. However, some are synth landscapes with minimal strings. There is a great contrast in the sound of some of the tracks on this album. Some are more traditional compositions and others are much freer than a standard composition would allow. I enjoy composing both types of music, the very structurally ruled based compositions and the free from structure, more experimental in design tracks. I think having a mixture in sound gives the album variety which can be interesting. It's also good to throw the rule book out when composing sometimes, and see what you can create without thinking too much about structure.

Some of the tracks have an intense textural music landscape. Others have few instruments and are very simple in design.

On the track London Bridge, the children singing are out of sync with the music, this is deliberate and it gives the listener a slightly uncomfortable feeling, but there is also a surrealness to this track which I think works. Having music do the opposite of what one expects can work, it depends how it is done.

There are also obvious influences in some tracks, like John Barry.

Other influences are more obscure. I admire too many composers from the 70s to present day.

There are 17 Tracks. The album is 1 hour 17 minutes
Album Cover Design - RB
Mixing and mastering was by Adrian Marks

The man on the cover is a keyboardist J.Hall who I have worked with before. Working with young musicians is always a positive thing as you can learn from them.

Children singing on London Bridge from the BBC sound archives