Music Downloads
The music samples are brief extracts taken from points throughout the work. We hope
they will give you some impression of the basic sound and character of the music,
and show you a few of the many types of soundscape and styles of performance that make up
Curly's Airships. The samples are all Layer 3 MPEG, 64kbps, mono
recordings and do not reflect the quality of the sound engineering on the CD.
Theme from Curly's
Airships
Here's a
sample of the first occurrence of Curly's Theme on track one. This musical
motif re-occurs in the work, but this is the strongest arrangement, with
soaring lead guitar, driving bass and relentless percussion!
Walking Out The
R33
Join Curly and the
aircrew of the airship R33, or Tiny
as she is affectionately known, as the 500 strong groundcrew, each holding a
rope from the airship, walk
her out of her hanger in preparation for a dawn flight.
Airship Shanty
Many of the Airship crew came from the Royal
Navy, bringing some of the maritime traditions to their new element. Here's a sample
of the Liberty Watch singing one of their Airship Shanties in the sun. This
version is the final mix which supercedes the version which was previously
available on this site.
Director's Song
Or perhaps The
Director's Lament. The Director of Airship Development,
Reg Colmore, ponders the impossible task before him -
the construction of R.101, his design brief constantly changing and
his planning undermined by premature announcements to the press. A very strong
vocal performance by Paul Roberts as Colmore.
Cutting
The Lady In Half
Judge's sense of
humour manifests itself throughout the work and here's a typical
example. R-101 in its original configuration had insufficient lift and
despite the removal of fittings and furnishings and the slackening of the
the gas cell wiring, the fixed weight to lift ratio was too small.
The only solution - cut the ship in half at its widest point and insert an
additional gas cell. Hence the title of the track, after the Music
Hall trick of the same name.
The
Last Minutes
The place: The
town of Beauvais, France; the time: 2:00 in the morning on October 5th
1930. Curly is about to take his turn at the controls of R.101 on her maiden
flight as she struggles to make headway against the battering gale force
winds and soaking rain. One of the emotionally
stongest pieces of the whole work, Judge's drumming set's the pace, Hugh
Banton's sometimes soaring, sometimes manic organ work dominates the piece
while John Ellis's guitar punctuates the growing sense that something is
about to go horribly wrong...
Virtual
Poster
R.101
Engineering Drawing
Exclusive to visitors
to this site! This specially commissioned engineering drawing of R.101 can
either be viewed online or can be saved to disk for printing out at up to A4
size. Clicking on the link at the left wiill open a new browser window
containing the (large) GIF image. Scroll around in the Engineering Drawing
using the browser's scroll bars, or save the file to disk, open it in your
favourite graphics program and print it out landscape on A4 paper.
If you don't already have a MP3 player, you can download Real Audio Player free
from www.real.com
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