“Music is aural cinema.”

Never settling for a formula, Eric Chamberlain uses a vast array of hardware, software and unknown technology, always experimenting with new ideas, techniques and approaches. Always his own harshest critic, he constantly seeks to improve and grow.

His music has appeared on countless radio, magazine and DJ charts over the years along with the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Future Sound of London, Aphex Twin, Skinny Puppy, BT, Underworld, Front 242 and others. His vision has since grown as he seeks to produce, with joy and gratitude, aural cinema beyond genre and beyond the threshold of the sublime. Eric has also written and produced music for various TV spots including pro bono work for Health Care For the Homeless, the Wanagi Wolf Fund and others.

While Chamberlain has worked across, in and combined countless genres, his true strength lies in going beyond genre altogether to create an aural cinematic experience he calls Cinetecture:

“Cinetecture is music as aural cinema. It is based less on repeating structures and more on evolving structures that take on a life of their own and grow over time without losing their original DNA. Creating aural cinema is like discovering the form of an invisible serpent of divine energy, always changing shape but always the same creature."

Chamberlain's music often blurs or erases the line between the diegetic and non-diegetic, thereby making a more immersive experience for the target audience. As a film writer, director and producer, Eric understands how music and sound are crucial to the emotional, psychological and spiritual impact of the experience, be it for film, games or other projects.

"Sound is the medium in which the world of games and film exist. Music and sound design are more than just a sensory layer that complements the visuals; they are the very spirit and life force of the experience itself."

When he's not pushing the envelope of music and film Eric seeks to help and inspire others through volunteer work, inspirational abstract art, writing how-to articles as well as a self-help book for creatives he wrote and published.

Artist statement:

I am a composer and filmmaker who wants to find ways to make games more emotionally, psychologically and spiritually immersive through music and sound. Be it through seeing music as a form of cinema, music as a landscape that can be entered, or by finding ways to make music more diegetic, I love the idea that music can be more than another layer of content and I love the idea that a "game" can be much more of an experience beyond simply being an entertainment product.

While my musical background could be familiarly described via styles such as electronic, industrial, modern classical, ambient, etc, I feel that the true power of the divine fire we call music is best used not by confining it in such terms but instead by encouraging it to flow in a way that is a benefit to the target audience. I also believe that the individual elements of a game or film, such as story, character, action, environment, music and sound are all individual notes in a chord that, when combined with what players bring of themselves, make new, higher, even otherworldly experiences. Music can be used to make unusual color combinations of emotion and spirit that aren't otherwise possible in life and this is the kind of experience I want to help create for others.

I have sacrificed everything I possibly can in this world in order to continue my music's journey. I would like to think that I have the vision to bring something worthwhile to the table in the service of others.

December 19, 2025: AI in Music

AI presents an interesting new circumstance, toolset, set of challenges and paths to new perspectives in music. As I write this, the music models with which I have experience are essentially diffusion models mixed with LLM so users can provide input. 

While I have experienced some interesting and even impressive results, what I am really in need of is a music AI that uses a reasoning model such as ChatGPT. As it is now, AI music is akin to pulling a lever on a slot machine and hoping for good results. A reasoning model would enable me to make music not otherwise possible by following instructions and executing, not just as an AI session musician or engineer, but as an entity that can actually translate my vision into sound by following instructions written in prose as opposed to scraping what is already in the world.

I am talking about actually using AI to go beyond what humans have made or would even consider making. To me, music is not only the ultimate form of cinema, it is the manifestation of divine energy. I do realize this sounds crazy, but there it is. I have within me, since I was 4 years old, an otherworldly flow of empyreal vision and energy. I can "see" music and imagine what is beyond human. Sometimes it's easier to think in these terms when I am composing rather than in music or cinematic theory terms, the reason being that music theory does not have the capacity to describe my internal vision. 

I have tried, with some success, but also some difficulty, to build the flow in my head by conventional means. The difficulty: The human mind only has so much bandwidth at a given time to process ideas. Therefore, building the flow conventionally yields either a clunky flow or too many options from experimentation to actually finish. While the experimentation and sandbox mentality is useful, it is problematic when one must design music and execute efficiently without losing the vision and its flow. 

As a composer and a filmmaker, I often create or manage ideas by way of establishing a parametric space for music design with archetypes and vectors that simply cannot be described with musical terminology or music theory. I use a variety of perspectives to imagine or define music.

Examples:

1. In tonal music, we move between poles like tonic, dominant, and subdominant, or between keys, or simply between consonance and dissonance, and so on. In my approach, the poles are expressive archetypes instead of harmonic functions:

Field of expression: I create vectors and fluidity between poles of different species of qualities, eg.,

A. Beauty, B. Terror, C. Crimson wind 
A. Twisted jet engine, B. Lion's mane, C. Epinephrine overdose ("divine fire for blood” sensation)
A. Jet crashing into building, becomes, B. Architecture in the afterlife, lit by, C. Perished souls as beautiful dappled light

2. "Drawing" music: I accidentally discovered that I could "draw" music when I had an inspiration but not the time or tools to write it musically. It just flowed out of me naturally. A drawing could represent a single measure, an entire piece, even an entire collection or soundtrack, and everything in between, even all at once.

3. Thinking beyond human: In what music or other cinematic form would a 5000 IQ space octopus have? How would I imagine it and then build it? Such exercises broaden horizons and make new, heretofore unknown perspectives possible.

By having a reasoning model music AI, I would have at my disposal the proper bandwidth to successfully translate otherworldly ideas quickly without compromising the flow. I don't know if we will ever achieve AGI or not, surely there will be debates, but I do believe that, at least, what I am describing will be possible soon. In fact, even the AI tools available now are a helpful stepping stone, albeit a stepping stone with some lingering sound quality issues.

May 17, 2025: Vangelis and Serpents of Divine Energy

I was quite young, about 4, the first time I noticed music in life. I had been exposed to other music but then I heard something that stirred something inside me. Somehow this music was no mere collection of notes, but a doorway to a world that I could enter. It was striking in that sense. Some years later I would find out that the music was from Heaven and Hell, by Vangelis.

Throughout my life I felt pulled towards other music that more directly gave me a similar sensation. Eventually I came to see all music this way. Then, once in high school, I had the most astonishing dream. In the dream, I was awakened by a stirring, a commotion. I went out side to see what was going on. In this dream I had a sense not afforded humans in waking reality. I could sense currents of music flowing and slithering through the air and around the clouds. I describe the currents as “serpents of divine energy.”

As I was pulled deeper into this sensation of undulation I became aware that everything in the world, myself included, was made of divine music, itself intertwined light and dark spiritual energy. It was as if I was being shown something by God. As in, “Here ya go, kid! Now let’s see what you can do with it.” It was an astonishing revelatory experience, one that I think about every day.

Decades later, Vangelis would pass away. In fact, it has just occurred to me, upon looking it up as I write this, that he died today, May 17, 2022. As I was reminiscing at the time, while looking through Vangelis material Online, I found an interview he gave later in life. In this interview he said that everything was made of music.

When I look at experiences and perspectives like these, especially as I get deeper into life, it becomes more clear than ever that control is an illusion and that something much higher is going on. The connection to a higher spiritual flow is obvious to me via the Heaven and Hell experience and my own dream of light and dark spiritual energy, then followed by the duplicate revelations that everything is made of music.

It is clear to me that something higher is going on, far beyond mere coincidence. I have said previously that the empyreal flow of energy and vision with which I have been blessed, that comes from without, of which I am a conduit, is already there. That I am not actually creating anything, but rather merely channeling what is already there. To some this is lunacy. To me, it is the clearest, most important thing in my entire life.

Perhaps our similar observations and connection indicate that we are of the same cloth, connected to the same empyreal flow. Whatever that higher thing or place is, that I can not just hear, but see, and understand beyond both, that is where I am from and what I am. I am part of that flow, and this will always be the most important thing in life.

August 27, 1987: The World is Made of Divine Music

People say I sound crazy when I say things like the world is made of divine music, like that dream I had when I was a kid. It's not crazy. Physicists say that, at some level, everything is vibration; all I did was point out that the vibration is music. The whole world is divine music, intertwined light and dark spiritual energy. Look around you. Forget everything you take for granted, clear your mind, and look at this place. The fact that any of this is here at all is completely, utterly bonkers. And look at everything that happens and that goes on, everything a rerun since the dawn of time, nothing new under the sun, same dance. Different song, different dress, but the same dance. It's all an endless flow with everything connected to everything else. Sometimes in harmony, sometimes consonant, sometimes dissonant, but always connected and flowing. It couldn't possibly anything but music, the ultimate form of cinema.