This year my monthly challenge has been to create a piece of electronic music using only one short field recording to create the whole piece on the theme of Imaginary Creatures. Usually the sample or field recording will have a loose connection to the creature but this piece was created after a walk in a local park where I took recordings of metal bits and bobs. It was 19 secs of a what I thought was a “spoiled” recording with added wind and talking passers by but proves to me that I shouldn’t just delete files as there may be possibilities.

Anyway, on reading the full story of the Minotaur, I am of the firm decision that the Ancient Greeks had a mean streak.

The Minotaur was a half-bull and half-human monster who lived in the Labyrinth, which expanded underneath the court of King Minos in Crete and was born from the union of Minos’ wife Pasiphae with the Cretan Bull. This bull was sent as a gift from Poseidon to Minos, in order to support him in his struggle to become the ruler of Crete. However, Minos did not sacrifice the bull as he was meant to, but liked it so much he kept it. Poseidon was enraged, as Ancient Greek gods often were, and made Pasiphae fall in love with the bull. When the Minotaur was born, he would only eat humans as he was an unnatural creature. Minos asked for advice from the oracle of Delphi, and was told to create a maze (designed by his architect, the famous Daedalus) underneath his palace and put the Minotaur there.

The Minotaur’s woes didn’t end there.

One day, the son of Minos, Androgeus, decided to participate in some Athenian games but he was killed by mistake. Minos, infuriated, attacked Athens and then demanded that fourteen young people from the city be sent annually to Crete as a sacrifice to the Minotaur. In a following year, Theseus, son of the king of Athens Aegeus, volunteered to go and kill the monster. When he arrived in Crete, Ariadne, daughter of Minos, fell in love with him, and offered him a sword, as well as a ball of thread. She told him to tie the thread near the entrance of the labyrinth and unroll it as he goes deeper, so that he could find the way out later. Advice that all helped in the demise of the Minotaur.

No wonder my Minotaur is such a sad tormented creature, a lost soul wandering in the bowels of the Labyrinth.

I am creating other Imaginary Creatures but to hear the whole collection you will have to wait until I release them together in the near future.

If you are interested in Ancient Greek mythology  you can read more here

Artwork by Museleon