The Nightjar Looks On was written during the first half of 2009 in Brussels, Belgium. It was a kind of a big change at the time. Unlike the stuff I'd been writing before 2009, there's no downtempo electronica, it's electronic jazz in a sense that I hope stays true to the jazz part as much as the electronic part. For this reason it was also the first release under the name Somnambulist Quintet.

I'd messed around with rhapsodic structure before - this kind of ABCDE... 'one idea after the next' arrangement - but it had always been out of laziness or else by accident. So the track Suspended Conscious was the first time I sat down and actually attempted to write a long track in this form. To do myself a favour, I kept it really simple tonally, and in fact if there's any kind of constant throughout this nutty piece it's the very ordinary clashing of C major with C minor.

With Danse Macabre I turned the difficulty up a bit and opened with some less conventional chord phrasing, intending on writing a similarly long piece, but it seemed to end nicely at around 6 minutes.

Similarly, the remaining tracks were initially a long piece called "Nightjar" which actually looked pretty decent on paper; but it was set to be about 15 minutes long and it became clear that I was biting off more than I could chew. I recorded and programmed the most fitting parts and thus came the medley that takes up the second half of the EP.

I've also included a selection of some of my really early stuff on here as bonus material for those who've been asking me for it over the years.