Where cats and dogs strut their funky stuff

Music for the Morigan Tetralogy

I’ve spent the last few years living and breathing the world of the Morigan Tetralogy, the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh Velvet Paw of Asquith Novel, which is a world where cats and dogs act like people, and where eccentricity is the norm and absurdity becomes eccentricity. It is, in short, a world where fluffy just got dangerous.

It is also a world that requires a soundtrack, particularly for its most popular format of Cinematic Audiobooks. It needs to smell like old leather and hot fin, and it needs to sound like a dangerous rendezvous happening in a plush, slightly sticky 1970s lounge.

This is the purpose of the Asquith Sound Aesthetic.

These albums, released with the Tetralogy on Spotify, Apple Music and Youtube Music, aren’t just generic background noise; they are the official musical environment of the Dooven Books: lush, sophisticated and perfectly aged, rather like me, frankly. and a genre that embodies the plush-yet-perilous atmosphere that I feel the stories arrive from.

Each track is crafted to feature:

• The String Orchestra: Because nothing says "dramatic reveal" like sweeping violins.

• The Woodwind Section: Adding the unmistakable aah of classic lounge.

• Rhodes Piano: For a dreamy, slightly melancholy texture.

• Tijuana Brass: For those sharp, unexpected accents of pure spy-film flair.

• Complex Harmonies: This is the true soul of the genre—it has to be richer than elevator music and readily feature tetrads.

The final ingredient is a subtle hi-fi warmth and a floating compression algorithm employed across previous albums of Dooven Muzak. The Asquith Sound Aesthetic needs to sound like it was recorded yesterday to be an effective portal to the yesteryear of spy adventure.

AI as a Producer, Not a Partner

There is, however, an important caveat on how this aesthetic is created.

Much of this music, along with the promotional videos and artwork around the tetralogy are enhanced with advanced AI tools. The advent of AI has been a powerful complementary production tool that enhances my polyauthoric approach to production outlined in my videos and earlier posts. With regard to Dooven Muzak, it allows the realisation of a very niche sound aesthetic that wouldn't otherwise be possible because of time restraints and collaboration opportunities.

That said, it is important to understand that The Velvet Paw of Asquith novels are a pure, unassisted expression of my creativity.

Writing the Dooven Books, with all their messy absurdism, and the process of plotting and expressing them, is a deeply personal expression of self. The glorious satisfaction from writing is an intrinsic human experience that I revel in, and the inclusion of AI in that core process would hinder the thrill of witnessing and transcribing their unfolding scenes.

So, while AI helps set the mood and is a new engine of polyauthorism, the books' creation, with their narration and ridiculous dialogue and arguments, remain untouched and untainted by its influence.

The books are, in other words, completely me.

I hope the Asquith Sound Aesthetic helps you better feel, see and understand the storyworld where my fluffy, dangerous, and often clinically insane friends reside.