I had the pleasure of working with James Takata, Elizabeth and Isabella Blake-Thomas on an indie film called Kepler's Dream in late 2014. Not much more than a year later, James, Elizabeth and Isabella were finishing up a short film called Broken Wings and to my surprise, they needed a composer! It took maybe two weeks to nail down the direction and write the music. It wasn't until 2017 that my schedule freed up enough to revisit these tracks and thanks to better equipment, polish each one for this release.Broken Wings is somewhere around six minutes, with the majority of the film consisting of music underneath. I included early versions of two pieces on this release. The first, Bad Grade, included a heavy bass thud as the paper with an"F" landed on the protagonist's desk. It was a little heavy handed, but the real issue was that the thud centered the focus on the grade and away from the girl. Sometimes we have to try an idea to best learn what won't work. An early version of The Escape included a motif in the center of the piece right before the large crescendo. Had that melody been introduced earlier in the film, it might have worked better at this point in the score.Most of what makes up the rest of this album are songs written around the same time of Broken Wings. The commonality here is that every track includes piano, strings or both. The only tracks written later were Angels Don't Have Wings and Olympus Mons. Both were written sometimes in 2016 and even though they are considerably more electronic in sound, I believe they sit well with the overall concept of this release. Both tracks also provide a nice sonic change in the album's dynamic when listening start to finish.The Broken Made New and You Can't Fix What Ain't Baroque were both written for another short film. For You Can Fix What Ain't Baroque, the director needed something that sounded baroque, yet slightly electronic since the film took place in the future. I tried to make it as 'human' as possible for this album. The Broken Made New was meant for when the main characters miraculously escaped the dark, underground city to the earth's surface (i.e. THX-1138). Unfortunately, neither were used in the film, but I am fond of these tracks nonetheless and believe you may enjoy them too. It wasn't until late 2016 that these two ideas were fleshed out to their current state.The Week of Weeks and The Heavyweight were written following what I will remember as the worst week of my life. Without going into details, it was both emotionally and physically scarring, forever changing my core and not necessarily for the better. Not long after the aforementioned week, I was hired to score the music for Broken Wings. Interestingly, the dirge-like piano melody of The Things We Can't Escape was originally conceived for use in Broken Wings. It was a direct reflection of my current state and didn't fit the film's narrative at all. Not too surprising, right? It was shelved until late 2016 and remains one of my favorite works to date. Play it loud.All that being said, this music is unapologetically moody. What can I say? I've always been drawn to sad music. Feist and Aimee Mann bring me more joy than Smashmouth ever could. DanielAll music written and produced by Daniel CarltonCopyright 2017 Finger Chili Productionshttp://fingerchili.comThe pdf booklet for the album can be found at http://fingerchili.com/AlbumArt/broken_wings_booklet.pdf