Temple of the Sun is track no.9 on the album “So That’s How It Ended…”.

It’s electronic (“trance”, kind of?) and the oldest track on the album: originally composed, produced and released on SoundCloud in 2015, I remixed it and got it properly mastered in 2021 for re-release as part of the album.

Composition and Production

Unlike the other tracks on the album, this is more of a production piece than a song in the traditional sense of the term.

Back in 2015, I decided to purchase a hardware synthesizer to move away from virtual instruments, at least in part. I ended up getting Roland’s FA-06 synth and thought it would be cool to produce a track built around this new synth.

The sound patch “Temple of JV” has quickly become one of my favourites on the FA-06. It’s big, multi-textured and works great on the low-range, mid-range, and high-range, so it’s very versatile and can be used as a bass, as a pad, or as a lead. 

(Fun Fact: I subsequently used “Temple of JV” again on my remix of Steven Wilson’s “Personal Shopper”  (2020) and on “Darkness of my Heart”.)

I came up with the basic theme for the track by playing around with “Temple of JV”, and that’s where the name “Temple of the Sun” came from. 

Except for the drum beat (Vengeance Essential House Vol.2 “Housebeats” sample) and the guitar power chords (RealStrat + a blend of GuitarRig 5’s “One May” and “God’s Love” presets), all the other sounds came from the FA-06: 

• Bass: “Acid Bs 6”
• Synths: “Synth PolyKey”, “Syn Brs 12”, “Alive”, “Strings4Film”, “Velo Voxx” and “Vox Pad 1” 

The only vocal on the track is the vocoder-enhanced “Temple of the Sun” phrase, which I created using a blend of four FA-06 “Vocoder Rbt” presets: “Sync Sweep”, “Female Aahs 2”, “Vintage Stack” and “Disturbed Sync”.

I find the chord progression quite satisfying and think it generally holds up pretty well… what do you guys think?

Credits

Music: A. Robin

Vocals: SuperCool-Guy

Instruments: SuperCool-Guy

Arrangement, mix and production: SuperCool-Guy

Mastering: Jon Astley 

Illustration: Jim Marx. https://jim373.deviantart.com/ Used by Permission.