Released: Spring 1984

Atmosphere ATMOS 011

Subtitled "Atmospheric Themes and Abstract Effect Music"

Ant's tracks on the first side of this album were written and recorded in July 1983

The tracks for this project were recorded in July 1983 on 8-track in Ant's studio, with Atmosphere hiring a Roland Jupiter 8 synthesiser for him to use.  The variety of new sounds that it provided was to prove to be a source of inspiration as he recalls, "I just threw music from it at the tape machine for three or four weeks, which was wonderful.  I was like a child in a sweet shop trying all these different sounds and recording them."  In addition to the tracks which made the final selection for this project, Ant also recorded a number of further improvised synthesiser pieces during these sessions which proved to be either too long or nebulous for use as library pieces.  With the subsequent addition of overdubs a number of these tracks would see the light of day on Private Parts and Pieces VII: Slow Waves, Soft Stars released in 1987. 

Notably, the first two parts of Ice Flight (Flight of the Snow Petrel - Glacier Bay and Flight of the Whale-Birds - Blizzard Mountain) were both proceeded by short scene-setting link pieces that came from a long improvised track with the working title of 'Spirals' recorded during the 1983 sessions.  This was based around an arpeggio pattern on the Jupiter 8 with Ant altering the sound as the pattern repeated itself.  One section of this long improvised piece was subsequently issued on Deeper Mysteries under the title of Icicles, whilst during the later sessions for Slow Waves, Soft Stars Ant added overdubs to another section of the same track to create the third part of Ice Flight (Flight of the Albatross - Ice Island).

Other tracks recorded during the same sessions which were not released on this LP would be made available by Atmosphere to programme makers on quarter-inch tape and some would be included on subsequent library CD releases.