'Anam' is a project spawned from the first brainchild of D1 and Metal Dragon, before they identified themselves as such. Conceived as an Irish 'Koyaanitsqatsi', it was to be shot on black and white, silent 16mm, and its half-hour soundtrack would be its only guide and its script - composed and recorded in advance. Conceived in summer of 1992, the music for the project was composed and recorded over the summers of 1993 and 1994 - concurrently with the building of an analogue recording studio to facilitate its production. That studio became the springboard for a plethora of Irish Independent releases on the 'Dead Elvis' label and, with the conversion of the studio to digital recording in the mid-nineties, D1 Recordings was born. Throughout the rest of the nineties the music videos made by D1 and Metal Dragon, and the experimental films, were always in some small way informed by the original 'Anam' plan - a grand, submersed visual narrative, carried entirely by music. The film itself is as yet unmade, but it has always been a ghost in the machine.
The original brief for the music itself was that it should not date, and so a clean natural sound was the aim, with traditional undertones throughout, even in the more urban passages. Yet, technically, the recording itself is absolutely a thing of its time. Pre-cubase, it was layered up on multi-track tape with a Juno sampling keyboard, with samples made from vinyl and cassette, with Dr.T sequencer running in Doss mode, triggered by timecode on the eighth track of the tape. To the chagrin of some producers who suggested remixes, most of the mix is pre-mixed, or 'bounced down', to clear tracks for more instruments. Such were the limitations of 8 track tape recording with one track gone to timecode. But working within those technical limitations was something which forced the arrangement and structure of the recording to be more economic, and we believe we achieved what we set out to achieve.
Alan Lambert, 2007
Aphasia Recordings are now making available this previously unreleased original film soundtrack, completed in 1994, and re-mastered in 2006.
