Martin Slidel Music Archive

Martin’s earlier works include:
  • Albino
  • Carillon, No. 1
  • If You Said So
  • Improvisations, Nos. 1–4
  • Morning After Night Before
  • Peel
  • Playtime
  • Sensing
  • The Terms Of My Existence
  • Tonight You Are Frida
  • Treading Air
  • Underarm Chiming Shirt
  • Unthunk
This archive comprises 15 compositions and improvisations, plus six arrangements of traditional and Songbook pieces.


THE NIGHT BEFORE • ELECTRONICA

Ten compositions and two arrangements of traditional songs, presented across 13 Bandcamp tracks.
  • Morning After Night Before — vocal by Martin
  • Da Beano (Albino) — remix
  • The House Of The Rising Sun (traditional) 
  • Tonight You Are Frida — vocal by Martin
  • Carillon, No. 1 — remix
  • The Terms Of My Existence — narration
  • Improvisation (No. 3) 
  • If You Said So — narration
  • Minka (traditional) 
  • Unthunk — narration
  • Playtime
  • Da Beano (Albino) — piano remix
  • Improvisation (No. 4) 
Morning After Night Before was written in the early 1990s, recorded with Emily Madill in the mid-2000s, and reworked in the 2010s with producer Skopje. The House Of The Rising Sun was recorded with Madill. Da Beano was also developed as a Skopje project, though the original composition dates from the 1980s. Other pieces date from the 2010s, including experiments using online music programmes. Two of the three narrations are voicemail recordings (one of which, Unthunk, uses Skopje’s voice). Martin also created Flowsnake, a short kinetic animation featuring his remix of Skopje’s instrumental piece Electric Bells.


SLIDESHOWS • AV PRESENTATIONS 
  • Repossession
  • Sensing Suite — see: AV Installation
  • The Terms Of My Existence — narration 
  • Tonight You Are Frida — vocal by Martin
  • Treading Air
Tonight You Are Frida and The Terms Of My Existence date from Martin’s undergraduate days, when both were presented as slideshows at The AV Room, Brighton School of Art, during media studies with Mike Tucker. The original visual material from these presentations would need reconstruction. A third piece, Treading Air, survives: a version of a song written in the 1980s, using slides as miniature canvases for paintings.

The Terms Of My Existence features narration by Martin’s late friend Bob (Stephen Gattis), the subject of Tonight You Are Frida. Its soundtrack closes with an extract from a Scherzo piano motif (unscored). Bob was an ABBA impersonator. The song concerns the artifice of performance, also referencing Frida Kahlo. Backing vocals are by Maryam Ghaffari. Martin participated in the International Festival of Live Art at the Sallis Benney Theatre, presenting his slideshow Repossession. A reworking of its soundtrack Lure (later scored for flute, piano and snare-drum) is unreleased.


SENSING • AV INSTALLATION

Sensing was first presented as a suite of four studio compositions for an installation featuring 500 kinetic and photographic slides, shown at The Dance Studio, Brighton School of Art. It opened the Degree Shows and was selected for external examination. Some original material (Carillon, Morning) was lost but later rerecorded. Martin graduated in 1997 with a 2:1 in Music With Visual Practice at the School Of Visual And Performing Arts, as it was then known.
  • Carillon
  • Morning
  • Sensing
  • Peel
The audience was led into the studio by performer Miss Mogga via a chiming curtain. This echoed a separate interactive composition, Underarm Chiming Shirt. Martin’s first carillon (originally titled Peal) was played at the start of, and between, the three main presentations, alongside bespoke gobos to represent constellations. Carillon (eventually Carillon, No. 1) was remixed by Emily Madill for Martin’s four-day AV installation at Trinity Buoy Wharf. 

The Bandcamp version of Morning After Night Before is sung, but the installation version, simply titled Morning, was instrumental. The central composition, Sensing, incorporated a piano score later recorded as a standalone solo. However, the longer studio version for the AV installation incorporated soundtrack, distortion and percussive features as well as improvised narration and throat or speech-signing by Martin. There is also a shortened, edited version. 

The fourth composition, Peel, is an experimental piece recorded ten years after its original tune (Cloudshadows) was written. Peel refers to the layers of onion skin used as kinetic slides. The arrangement is deliberately inverted and stylised: the melody reduced to a background intonation beneath recurring percussive drives. Martin would prefer to rework it when an approach becomes clear. It incorporates a synth track of the original tune, recorded by Martin as a teenager, though that tape is now lost.


SENSING • DEMO TAPE

Sensing was also issued as a demo including a later improvisation on home keyboard using a 4-track.
  • Tonight You Are Frida — vocal by Martin
  • The Terms Of My Existence — narration by Bob
  • Sensing — studio version
  • Improvisation (You, Them, Us)
This is the original, full studio version of Sensing from the suite for the AV installation (the piano score later recorded as a standalone solo). The demo tape received a mixed and satirical assessment in Holly Hernandez’s Demo Hell column in Melody Maker (2000). Skint Records also responded positively.

“He craves a kind of etherealness…” 
— Holly Hernandez, Demo Hell, Melody Maker

“your tape showed some promise…” 
— Skint Records


IMPROVISATIONS
  • Improvisation, No. 1 (You, Them, Us) 
  • Improvisation, No. 2 — gamelan performance
  • Improvisation, No. 3 (Warm Love Gone Cold) 
  • Improvisation, No. 4 (In Transit) 
Improvisation, No. 1 was recorded for Martin’s Sensing demo tape. It is based on a motif from You, Them, Us, one of a handful of piano pieces composed at Brighton. It was later included as part of the Del Rio Jazz project (see below). Improvisation, No. 2, on gamelan, was performed live by Martin and Yassin Zelestine at Oubliette Arthouse, the Limelight Club, London, in 2012. No recording or notation survives. 

From The Night Before collection (unnumbered), Improvisation, No. 3 is a piano improvisation with soundtrack, based around Peter Filleul’s theme Warm Love Gone Cold. Improvisation, No. 4 is a rougher, techno-influenced piece. Originally titled In Transit, it appears on YouTube as Improvisation 4 (Transit Mix).


DEL RIO JAZZ

In the 2010s, Martin established a jazz project that stalled before the Covid-19 pandemic. It comprised eight recordings, including arrangements of standards and two original compositions.
  • Albino (Slidel) — keyboard/4-track  
  • Blue Skies — vocal by Martin  
  • Fly Me To The Moon — instrumental version  
  • Fly Me To The Moon — vocal by Martin  
  • God Bless The Child — vocal by Martin  
  • Improvisation (No. 1, Slidel) — from Sensing demo  
  • Minuet — keyboard/4-track  
  • Smile — vocal by Martin
Earlier recordings were remastered alongside the new material. Minuet, recorded on keyboard and 4-track, is a jazz-style version of the final piece of Johann Philipp Krieger’s Suite in A minor.

The project was not revived after Martin returned to applied composition during lockdown. Martin did, however, create a jazz arrangement of his early-1990s song Begin Again as an update, now listed among his chamber works. Del Rio Jazz reached the top three in both the London and UK ReverbNation Jazz Charts.


© Martin Slidel 2026 — Image and text


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