His relationship with music started when a long time ago, as a child, he would eat his meals if and only if watching music shows on TV, probably already captured by melodies, beats and that strange tools with strings, black and white keys, knobs etc, but who knows. Afterwards, Tristan Irvine actually started being fascinated with musical instruments at the age of three, when he finally put his hands on some keyboards. A new world opened before his eyes.
At age ten his ordinary life was already a struggle, so he took total refuge in music, doing all he could to explore the most of it, browsing through every kind of genre and forgetting about everyone and everything else. At the same time he started making his own naive-early songs, filling up loads of old good music tapes and he realized then that music was becoming a real necessity.
It was not until he turned thirteen that he could start playing local live shows with various bands, however, he was too ambitious to be part of generic cover bands, therefore he started learning to play different instruments, compose, perform and record on his own.
In early 2006, after endless hours spent reading and practicing obsessively, he was ready to put everything he learnt into practice; he started writing his solo instrumental album. He focused on the project for an entire year, writing, producing and playing every instrument on it. That project went under the name of Fragments Of Winter, a mixture of alternative rock ‘guitar-bass-drums’ music, ambient atmospheres, melodic piano and cold synths melting together to form the album Let The Dream Begin (released 25/05/07).
As of now, he finally finished up the new sophomore album, Skyrockets (released 09/09/09).
Again, created entirely by himself alone, it is definitely a more mature record and it took two years of experimentation and hard work for it to come to a conclusion.
Skyrockets is a record influenced by an extremely wide range of musical genres and it may instantly appear as a major departure from the rock dreamy sound of Let The Dream Begin, and well, it is.
After the completion of my first album, I started screwing around with electronic sounds, synths, keyboards, drum machines and effects more than ever, without any idea in particular. I thought it was good to start with a fresh mind, new sounds, new directions, without setting any limits to my creativity, and it turned out to be the best thing I could do.
I was immediately so pleased with the results of the first few demo songs that I continued writing and writing.
It was after a couple of weeks that the musical concept of the album started becoming clear. The songs are mainly surreal and visual, defined by a melancholic, cold and often despairing sound; at the same time, on top of it, everything is so full of colour, bright lights and loud noises, just like fireworks in a night sky.
I also focused on using different sounds and changing instrumentation for every song, in a way to give each one its own personality and atmosphere, preserving at the same time the overall sound of the entire record, which flows from start to finish like a story, a journey.. each song merges into the other, barely giving the listener the opportunity to catch his breath.
Skyrockets owns song cycles, a beginning and three endings, an interlude, two intros-to-song and of course, the actual full tracks. All of this has been conceived during the writing and recording process, so it’s supposed to be experienced as a big epic 52-minutes “thing” rather than 13 little parted “things”. But after all, everyone’s got the right to do whatever he wants with his own copy, right?
As I allowed to myself full creativity and no deadline I ended up writing a lot of songs. Thirteen of them formed the actual album, while I decided to release the other ten as a second bonus album called Noises (A Collection Of Unexpected Sounds). Pretty much the title says it all.
Astonishing. Lots of violins, marching band drums, ethereal synthesizers and bright keyboards.. just a perfect match. I think this is THE song which best represents the music of Fragments Of Winter. Don’t you agree?
The end is a bit unexpected, and that’s because it’s not actually over.. it has a sequel, a second part..
I’ve had some ideas about a beautiful music video for this song, which are stil in the drawer waiting to be put to use.
In the meantime, if you’re an illustrator/video director and would like to make it real feel free to contact me.
Bolts Out Of The Blue. I wrote this track at the same time of Dead Of Night as I already knew it would have become the song following Astonishing, and I thought it needed the right introduction. This came very quickly. I recorded the melody while searching for the right sounds and effects.. through the process I had a clear vision of what I wanted. The end result was arguably beyond expectation.
In The Dead Of Night. I first recorded the demo of this song in a rush, just to be sure to remember it in the future; it was a snippet, so sometimes I would play it in loop over and over just to see if it was good enough. Well, I loved to listen to the snippet for really long times, so I ended up wanting the song to be very steady and kind of repetitive, more like an ambiance background music. I’m glad with the way it came out in the end.
Bitter Colours. This song is fully based on four equal chords. I put myself to the test writing different parts for it using a single chord progression, without making it boring. The first and most likely not last attempt at an experiment of this kind. Also, I specifically focused on creating and polishing the right sounds for it, but after all I do that for every single song; yeah, I’m a “little” obsessed.
Sweet Implosions. Maybe I’m not supposed to say it but who cares, this is one of my very favourite tracks. At first I wrote it entirely on an old keyboard with orrible sounds and I didn’t want to record it at that time, instead I continued rehearsing it until I finally had an accurate idea of how I wanted the whole song to sound like. Then I recorded it with serious gear and constantly added layers and layers of staff and effects. At some point I put delay on the drum tracks by mistake and it changed everything, I loved it so I kept it in. I also like the muffled and dull sound the track acquired; it slowly grow into this full big hopeless and painful melody and almost feels like it would explode from the L and R channels.
Five Hundred Thousand Feet Below Ice. There’s no much to say about this track. I had a melody in my head so I sat at my computer and recorded the whole track in one go, together with the noise surrounding the beginning and ending of it. What came out was a frozen, oceanic interlude (hence the title). I pretty much haven’t made any alteration to it after it was recorded as it always sounded really good to me.
Running Through The Gloom. This was the very last track I recorded for the album. I was mixing The Loudest Rainbow and came up with some ideas about an introduction that would have been the perfect fit for the song. I turned on the keyboard and started playing and recording, improvising.. it came natural. Then I messed up the sound with lots of feedbacks and distortion until I was pleased with it. I’ve got a vision every time I listen to it, like it would be the soundtrack to a wrecked/burned down city. What do you see?
The Loudest Rainbow. This track has a bitter beginning, with a distorted keyboard fighting against a cold synthesizer, left versus right channel, followed by seriously tweaked bass and drums. Then, the whole song actually becomes mellower with violins, pizzicato and bright synthesizers. Near the end pretty much every instrument is brought into the mix and the song finally reaches its peak, just moments before melting completely into the beginning of the following track.
A Flower, Smashed. I first wrote a demo version of the chorus of this song while I was recording the first album, but then It didn’t fit in the record. So I returned on it during the writing of Skyrockets; I changed it heavily and recorded the first half… still I felt it wasn’t the right thing, so I forgot about it (eventually this became the up-beat electronic alternate version found on Noises). Months later I was playing random stuff on the guitar and I remembered of a song I wrote lots of years earlier, so I took the melodic line out of it and started to build the entire song from that. It was originally created entirely on guitar and recorded on a cell phone as a reminder. When I finally recorded it with synths, piano, bass etc, I realized it was the version that would have been included on the album. It’s a long ethereal ballad, very different from the original electro version inside Noises, also, it’s in the time signature of 4/4 instead of the original 3/4. The only thing actually similar between the two is much of the chord progression.
Digital Breakdown. I didn’t have a specific idea when I wrote this song. I just sat and started experimenting, during a moment of inspiration. Somehow it came out very dark in the end.. it was a type of sound I hadn’t ever achieved. As I continued writing it became frantic and heavy all of a sudden, almost without realizing it myself, changing atmosphere dramatically. So it definitely is a song in two acts to me. I probably got highly inspired by 8-bit and videogame music for the last part.
Lost In Walls. I was so into this giant musical concept of the record that I ended up creating three endings for it. This is the first one: slow and epic crescendo, full of tension, becoming louder and louder; a classic.. it’s like a murder, the last moments before dying: it opens with heartbeats and ends with gunshots in 4/4. A very personal and one of the first songs made for the record. Most of the whole concept came together thanks to this track, together with Astonishing,
Astounding. This is a song cycle following the first track Astonishing. I wrote it almost immediately after completing the first one and I knew this would have been the ending of the album. I used the same instrumentation and melody of Astonishing, it’s like a continuity, as if there would be no tracks between them. Everything ends as it started. But, as you return to the starting point, things changed..
Full Circle. This is the second song cycle and the very last grand finale of the record. I suddenly had the inspiration during a soggy evening in front of the TV, so I ran towards the keyboard and started playing what i had in my mind, which was basically an electronic revised version of Astonishing.
I recorded the first half, the electro one, and then let it go for a while. I came up with the second part several months later, during one of many sleepless nights. I just listened to what was done until then and recorded the last half straight until sunrise. It was perfect, because it had everything. It starts as a really digital and cold track and gradually turns into an epic harrowing wall of sound, with both electronic and acoustic instruments, full of delays, reverbs, distortion and madness, the icing on the cake. It just was a very inspiring night.