About a year after I had completed the tracks that made up Ethnotechno and uploaded them to the very first MP3 site, the site collapsed. Online music forums were awash with anger, dismay and disbelief.  I had uploaded some new work I had been creating to do with a soundscape based around the Wet Season that we experience every year in the subtropics. This time I had gone  back to my keyboard and added simple synth lines and made three tracks which were based around the atmosphere of the build up, then the rain falling then the rain forest responding. At the same time I produced a series of large watercolour works on the same theme. When I opened the exhibition of my work I also played the theme music and anyone who purchased a painting got the CD as well as a gift! Later on I also sold the CD through local outlets. But it was the music that caught the eye of another MP3 casualty,  Mike Mosczulewski,( he also claimed it was something I had posted but I can’t remember what now!)

He mentioned he had been collaborating with another online musician and asked if I would be interested in doing the same. I listened to their first track called ‘Skew’ and was hooked.  So started the collaboration that would undergo many name changes but was at first known as Red Candle. Mike was based in Wisconsin, Steve Russell, the other musician was based in Bristol England. So began a four year project known as ‘Life in the Barrens’.