Simonsound

***Words can be no substitute for the aural experience, but if you will have words, THE SIMONSOUND’s first album, Reverse Engineering, offers an intriguing variety of sounds, including ’50s and ’60s-inspired space music, mood music for film and TV, haunting vocal tracks, and switched-on cover versions of classics realized on the Moog synthesizer. The Simonsound is a sonic partnership consisting of SIMON JAMES and MATT FORD. Having previously worked together on Matt’s DJ FORMAT albums and with infinitely broader musical tastes than just hip hop and funk, they began working on The Simonsound as an outlet for their more experimental offerings. This is far from another DJ Format project. A few years ago the owners of the famous Chappell Music Library series approached Matt about making some new music incorporating elements from their back catalog. Frustrated by the limitations of working purely with samples, Matt invited Simon, who had already been creating experimental electronic music for radio drama, to collaborate on a track or two. The creative process worked so well that they continued to work on more material together, combining Simon’s experimental nature with Matt’s more structured approach. Reverse Engineering, slowly developed from there. The Simonsound didn’t rely solely on machines, inviting vocalist DEBBIE CLARE to collaborate on several tracks, resulting in “Bad Love,” “Between the Wake” and “The Sleep and Call of the Siren.” Further tracks on the album explore the kind of instrumental music you might have heard in the background of ‘60s and ‘70s cult TV shows or adverts.