Simulated Music
for electronics fixed media
Programme note

Completed in December 2010, Simulated Music marks something of a departure from my previous electronic music, the sound materials allowed much more freedom to ‘do their own thing’, left to unfold with minimal intervention. This is mirrored in a level of creative detachment from the music, which, in contrast to almost all my previous work, does not emanate from either religious, psychological or emotional concerns.

In total lasting just under an hour, the nine ‘Simulations’ are, both in terms of duration and content, a diverse collection, encompassing largescale, thundering noisescapes and soft, intimate whispers, wide clusters and narrow drones, piercing high pitches and powerful deep bass surges. Ever shifting and transforming, they are together suggestive of the worlds of noise, drone and ambient, yet stand apart from them all, occupying an abstract sonic space that is strange yet beguiling.


“Simulated Music is drone music in nature, ambient in form, spiritual in essence and none of those things at the same time. Eschewing any of the cliches associated with such genres, Simon Cummings has managed to create music that reaches far beyond emotions and meaning. Simulated Music aims for nothing less than Transcendence and has succeeded in doing so – a truly magnificent album.”
Pascal Savy, Fluid Radio, 15 July 2011
“The composer’s description recalls surrealist automatic writing procedures, but it doesn’t really prepare you for the music, which, in its droney/noisey/whispery way is much more coherent than a surreal stream of consciousnesss, shaped into bold, expansive gestures […] each piece has an air of uncertainty about it, from the very first, whose opening voice-like drone soon sags into an indefinite downward glissando, rendering every new moment unstable.”
Tim Rutherford-Johnson, The Rambler, 9 June 2011