Judge Smith - Curly's Airships

Here are mp3 samples from 'Curly's Airships'.
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. Just click to listen.

sample 1	275 KB	35 secs	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!
sample 2	609 KB	77 secs	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.
sample 3	434 KB	56 secs	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.
sample 4	614 KB	78 secs	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.
sample 5	417 KB	53 secs	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.
sample 6	507 KB	64 secs	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...

Curly's Airships

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