Deadmau5, Clockwork
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>The root of this, believe it or not, goes back over 300 years in the form of a 1695 composition by the English baroque music composer Henry Purcell named Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary.
In 1971, composer and Moog aficionado Wendy Carlos famously based her theme music for the notorious Stanley Kubrick movie A Clockwork Orange on this Purcell piece. This soundtrack then later provided the inspiration for Cygnus X’s The Orange Theme, which then itself became the inspiration for Clockwork. Quite a journey!
It’s the mechanical, cyclic nature of the chord progression here that fascinates and delights, continually modulating (changing key) with the mathematical precision of a clockwork device. At the same time, the continuous shifting from minor to major tonality and back again brings us constant dramatic tension.