Today I’m introducing you to two artists; Antarctic Wastelands (Ben) and Somniacs (for some known as Tommy Berre). Ben lives in Stockholm, Sweden and Tommy lives in Bodø in Norway.
Ben has made all kinds of different music but the ‘atmospheric’ nature of his music has remained relatively consistent. More recently he delved even deeper into the ambient music genre with Antarctic Wastelands. Tommy plays guitar and mainly works with crossover/new age/modern classical music, and he likes to collaborate with various artists to get new and fresh perspectives.
The song Star trails is the “A-side” of the release with the same name as the song and was released early December of 2019.
Tell us something about your track Star Trails!
Ben: Star Trails started life as just the atmospheric synth backing – as soon as I had composed it I knew that a beautiful sparse piano performance would be the perfect accompaniment. Tommy actually used some of the ‘lead’ synth notes to inspire the piano melody, which brings the two elements together in a wonderful way, as well as adding some beautiful flourishes in the higher registers to complete the celestial soundscape.
Tommy: As Ben says I based the main melody on his soundscape, basically just adding piano notes for whatever notes I thought I heard in his music, then moving the piano ahead of the synth track so the synths appear to be an echo of my piano. It was kind of a backwards way of writing, but it worked really great! Then I added the chord change midway in the tune to get away from the drone feeling, and finally an additional piano doing short bursts of notes in between the main melody. Ben mixed everything together when the tune was done.
Thanks for the song!
Check out these following links:
Antarctic Wastelands on Spotify
Somniacs on Spotify