0dB_Labs

The City Picture

The Original Score. Luigi Pascal Rondanini. Neural Syntax.

The book I want to talk about, The City Picture by Sean Ramnarine, has turned into a record. Fifteen pieces of original music, one for every turn of the story, from a freezing London winter in 1988 to the summer of 1989.

The City Picture is narrated by Gideon Filter, a young man who works the information desk at a big West End record store, lives in a cold flat in Greenwich, and spends his nights walking the city between ideas. Soho, Greenwich, New Cross, Brixton, Camden. The real main character of the book is London itself.

Late night walking music. The instruments of 1988 and 1989, the chorused guitars, the old polysynths, the drum machines, the dub records, the first acid house, but recorded and mixed the way we make records now, with depth and space and a proper low end. Not a museum piece. A memory.

So that's the record. The City Picture, the Original Score.

On Spotify and the other streaming platforms, the songs come out one by one, a new track every two weeks, through 0dB Labs. Follow along and each one arrives as it is released.

If you don't want to wait, this package is the whole thing. All fifteen songs, in WAV, FLAC and MP3, each one carrying its title, the artist Neural Syntax, the composer, the ISRC, the genre, and the line from the novel. The covers are here too: one for the album, and one for every song.

And the scores. All of them. Ninety-nine. Fifteen full scores, one for every track, and eighty-four individual parts, one for each instrument as it is written. If you play, you can sit down and play this music yourself, or with your band.

The book, The City Picture by Sean Ramnarine, is coming from Rondanini Publishing, and it isn't out yet. We'll announce the release date soon. When it arrives, read a chapter, play the track.