Race Knower

Compositions of experimental instrumental music

Race Knower is a self-taught electronic musician. His interests in music started at an early age and in his early teens adored Elvis Presley and Rock and Roll. As he grew older he became more and more infatuated with African American music, namely Gospel, Soul, Blues and Jazz but became aware that the musical environment at the forefront in the UK from the 1960s was the creative sounds of British Rock bands. Although he attended the famous Rock concerts at Bath City, The Isle of Wight and Hyde Park in their heyday, he found a greater identity with African American music as their stories in the blues matched some of his life experiences. Moreover the passion, with which they expressed themselves, connected more emotionally than commercial and chart topping music. His most inspiring musician was the late Ray Charles, but he also had a special place in his heart for the late Sam Cook and Albert King. The blues seemed like a refuge against the harshness of life in the work place and poor housing conditions. It also was the pacifier in social situations such as stereotyping and discrimination. In his mid twenties he undertook a study on Chord Construction for keyboards and Guitar and when the UK workforce was subjected to a three day week during the energy crisis in the early nineteen seventies, he found time on his hands and began writing songs. However the costs to hire musicians and studio time to demo them was well beyond his means. In any case commercial music trends were at odds with his musical desires. However he used his savings to buy studio time and hire musicians to record some of his songs between 1983/84 and paid for some record pressings but not unusually it failed to arouse any commercial interests. Matters took on a positive aspect with the emergence of computers and music technology and presented him with an opportunity to express his music through these mediums. His first musical productions titled “Blues for Sri Lanka” and “Fallen Star” were instrumental ideas produced on a laptop with a small hard drive and memory, using music software, a midi module and keyboards to generate the sounds of a midi orchestra. In or around 2007 he was working as a concierge in a block of flats, when an Argentine Businessman who had upgraded his arranger keyboard gave him his older model as he knew of his desire for music creation. Race then invested in a Digital audio workstation, which was really a recording studio in a box. These two items gave him the opportunity to produce his songs in a home studio environment; and he produced 3 CDs titled “Songs for hip-kool & laid-back kats” “Bagdad Blues” and “The Oversoul Connection”. His current projects are a CD called “Dancing with the blues” and instrumental compositions using loop-based software called “ No Instruments required”. He has worked hard to be a music composer and song-writing publisher in his own right and is dedicated to producing his own music in any direction that he is inspired.