The New Chill-Out Album By Gary Hunter

"The Garden Of Surreal Dreams" is my first venture in to making an electronic Chill-Out album. The project was initially started around 5 years ago when I recorded some very rough demo's of about 14 songs which comprised of strings, Piano and choral sounds.

The strange thing about these songs is that virtually all the ideas and melodies came to me whilst I was in bed at night, probably because I could n't sleep and it would be the norm for me to get up and hum a melody in to a pocket tape recorder or even turn on my synth and record the idea!

The original idea came about after hearing an ambient bonus CD that came with Moby's album "Hotel" and also listening to the John Foxx "Catherderal Oceans" albums.

At the time I posted some of these early demo's on to one of my web sites, iCompositions, to test the water and see what feedback I would get, surprisingly the feedback was very positive, however, I was n't really sure which direction I wanted to take this music, so the project was put on hold. Incidentally the original title of the album was going to be "Where Do We Go From Here?" but that was changed, more on that later!

In 2008 I decided to go down the route of recording the songs using analog synths, four songs were recorded, "The Long Goodbye", "Quiet Splendour", "A Glance In Your Direction" and "Where Do We Go From here?". Whilst I was very happy with these recordings I still was n't convinced that this was the correct route to take with this album. Again it was shelved!

In 2010, I started using a new Software Synthesizer, the reFX Nexus 2 and was astounded at how good it sounded and started recording a demo for a new song called "The Garden Of Surreal Dreams". When I listened to it I thought it had a similar feel to the recordings I had made 6 years ago! So "The Garden Of Surreal Dreams" was the catalyst for the direction I wanted to take these songs to, so it seemed logical to change the album title, plus I loved the name!

In 2011/2012 I have recorded 16 songs in total for the album with probably 12 used for the album itself. The songs are now at the mixing stage and mastering stage. These will be completed after the current project I am working on is finished (A Kraftwerk Covers Album). The songs sound completely different from the way they originally sounded and now have a rhythm section in all the songs! The album has been recorded using an X-Board 49 E-MU Midi controller keyboard and 4 Software Synthesizers, Native Instruments Absynth, Native Instruments FM8, Korg M1 and reFX Nexus 2.

I am looking at the album being released in Summer 2012 as a physical CD and digital download.

Details of all the tracks recorded can be found in the news section.