Flicker

Flicker is… the flame in your heart!

Guitar driven progressive melodies, scorching, searing and memorable. High in emotional content. Atmospheric pieces for film, TV, video games, advertisements – and your listening pleasure.

Flicker is composer, leader and project director George Davies along with a loose collective of friends, who are incredibly talented virtuoso session musicians. The band first came together in late 2000. Most pieces are composed on electric or acoustic guitar and span a variety of genres.

Flicker started as the brainchild of George. He had many spare instrumental pieces that were left over after various bands had not managed to put lyrics to them. Some of these were electric guitar pieces and others were acoustic pieces that were the results of his experimenting with non-standard tunings. Rather than just throw them away, the plan was to try to produce them as instrumental music.

Flicker’s central idea became the creation of beautiful evocative instrumental music for the film, TV and gaming industries. Several people had commented over the years that this tune or that one would make a great theme tune for such-and-such.

Back in 2000, the band’s players were feeling rather disillusioned with the music industry. It seemed overly obsessed with the idea of image rather than focusing on the music content itself. The content of much commercial music at the time of the formation of Flicker seemed to be very heavily censored. The rules were that it must be of a certain length and of a certain formula, using particular types of sounds or instruments, and the lyrics should be about romance/procreation, or boasting, violence and materialism for it to be played to and accepted by large radio or TV audiences.

Flicker collectively felt that much of the modern ‘music’ industry was far more akin to the soft porn industry than anything to do with what its classically-trained membership recognised as music. It was as if any kind of display of virtuosity or originality, or stepping outside of the boundaries of the censorship, meant the music was condemned, or worse, ignored. The corporate mainstream philosophy revolved entirely around brainwashing and fast profits from cheaply manufactured product – to quote Rockstar Games, “WE know what’s good – and we play it until YOU like it!”

Being reluctant to take up miming, and being handicapped by obviously being rubbish at music due to having grown beyond the teenage years, Flicker was seen as a way forward. Flicker felt that looking young and cute was not so important for making music for media where the makers of the music go largely unseen. Especially when the nature of such media may require music that is a little different to the diet of homogenised mainstream ephemera manufactured by the industry’s big players.

Twenty years later, the band remain active with George and a different ensemble of players and the music industry has gone even further down its dark path.

We hope you enjoy the amazing Flicker and their wonderful music.

For tracks which list The Plank amongst its instruments:
The Plank is an old and mighty electric bass guitar. Originally it was an Antoria jazz bass, and the wooden parts still are. Not much else is though. It has had various customisations over the years and is always tuned very low, mostly B-E-A-D. “E just isn’t low enough any more.” Very heavy strings are used, like pylon wire. When guitarists watch it being played, they can become confused and make mistakes, because it looks all wrong, even though it sounds right. “Don’t look then!” George would say.

For more Flicker, click on their Linktree:
https://linktr.ee/flickermusic