Simulated Music — postscript
for electronics fixed media
Programme note

Simulated Music, released in June 2011, was a cycle of music created at speed. As i wrote at the time, “critical decisions … were made with a minimum of deliberation. Once they were decided, i worked quickly, not concerning myself much with minutiæ, thinking instead about the broader, gestural shape of the music as a whole”. Nonetheless, the process that led to each ‘Simulation’, while relatively brief, contained a considerable amount of experimentation, as it was worked into its final form. On several occasions, i produced more than one version of a piece, uncertain of which i preferred; only when finally assembling Simulated Music did it become clear which versions of the pieces should be used. This ‘postscript’ contains nearly all of the alternate versions.


“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