Simon Slator
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Simon Slator (born 10 March 1979 in Dudley, United Kingdom) is a British Electronic and Ambient musician.
Simon's musical career started in 1995 with the creation of several Module files created on the Atari ST. Later upgrading to an IBM PC, Simon produced several albums of music, mostly inspired by Mike Oldfield and Jean Michel Jarre. Although independently released in 1999, one single entitled First Contact, hit the top of the Progressive Rock charts at Mp3.com, temporarily holding off Robby Krieger of The Doors.
With the aid of Virtual Studio Technology, Simon moved into longform Ambient pieces. In April 2003, Simon released a 43 minute soundscape entited 6am, depicting the outside world just as it wakes up. Offering the album as a free download, with very little promotion around Ambient music circles, the album was quickly snapped up and bought Simon to the attention of several magazines, particularly e-Dition where 6am was positively reviewed.
Three months later, a second soundscape appeared, entitled Antarctica. The album contained two tracks: a grand, sweeping piece making use of arpeggios alongside the dense, sprawling title track that depicted the harsh and desolate landscape of Antarctica. Compared to 6am, the album was an unmitigated success, receiving praise from listeners and journalists alike. The 25-minute title track also gave Simon his first radio exposure, being played in its entirety on an Ambient music show in Zagreb, Croatia.
The two albums that followed saw a move away from soundscapes and into the more calculated and timbral ambient music commonly associated with Brian Eno. Of these, only Four Patterns, released in October 2003, was a success having received almost 1,000 downloads before the end of the year. The heavily delayed and rush-released Ambientology failed to make any impact due to the album being unsatisfactory to Simon himself and thus receiving hardly any promotion.
In August 2004, Simon returned to the soundscapes that earned him his following. Skylight, recorded in only 4 hours, mixed Space music in with his usual style. The move was seen as refreshing and the downloads came flooding back. It is currently estimated to have been downloaded over 3,000 times - very significant for long-form Ambient music.
However, shortly after the release of Skylight, Simon announced that he would be going on hiatus for personal reasons undisclosed to the public. A further blow to fans came a year later when a hard disk failure erased Simon's comeback album, said to have been in a Berlin School style similar to Tangerine Dream and merely days away from post-production.
Spending the rest of 2005 and the first few months of 2006 away from music, Simon resurfaced in April on the Creative Commons site, Jamendo where all his soundscapes were uploaded. His first new release came shortly after in the form of Rain, a single containing two short tracks not lost in the previous year's hard disk failure, showing some inspiration from Vangelis.
As of June 2006, Simon is currently working on a proper comeback album, due for release later in 2006, and a digital remaster of his 2000 piece, "The Mosaic Effect".
Contents |
[edit] Discography
[edit] Official Albums
- 6am (April 2003)
- Antarctica (June 2003)
- Four Patterns (October 2003)
- Ambientology (March 2004)
- Skylight (August 2004)
[edit] Singles and EPs
- Rain (April 2006)
- The Mosaic Effect (Remaster) (August 2006)
[edit] Previous independent releases
Please note that these albums are not considered to be of studio quality and are no longer in circulation or even considered part of his discography
- Symphonie (March 1999) - contained early music created between 1996-1998
- Cold Sun (December 1999)
- The Mosaic Effect (August 2000) - currently being remastered and officially re-released
- Lifeline (November 2000)
- The Art of Deception (February 2001)
- The Dream Arena (April 2001)
- Beyond Sigma (July 2002) - never released
