Overview:
Perhaps the most unexpected moment of this year… and maybe in the last few years- a whole new album in ONE month! On February 2, 2020 I decided to join a “challenge”. The idea is to create an album during the month of February. It has to be 10 songs or 35 minutes of music. The RPM Challenge for 2020 began in earnest that evening.
This has been a complex yet very satisfying experience. As with many of my albums, I kept good notes on what I was doing. This is part of them.
The idea behind City Sounds comes from a formula that I discovered over 27 years ago. Sometimes music creates atmosphere on its own. Other times you can instill atmosphere into each track of an album in a very organized and purposeful manner. That is what I envisioned with City Sounds.
It started with a simple idea: make my music using the most organic, basic elements to get there. I am no virtuoso, so to get music from my head to your ears sometimes depends on my ability to conjure up some electronic wizardry. But for this album I wanted a different foundation. It would be my music and my ideas. However the individual notes would have, at least at their birth, been played a real person on a non-electronic instrument. I also wanted organic sounds: birds, streams, wind, etc. It had to be real and not synthetic. That idea was realized with this album.
For Cra+ Ons I went back to my electronica roots where guys like Jean-Michel Jarre, Klause Schulz, and Edgar Froesse held my listening attention span. Rhythmic tones and sound effects were always a highlight. Melody and mood worked together and painted a picture that set the imagination in motion. For this CD I tried to capture those concepts. Modern techniques and styles were injected here and there to bring these ideas to life! In all, some 45 musical pieces were created in the process. But only a fraction could make the cut that would make up this album.
This album is inspired by events that took place in the Bible book of Joshua. It is free to the public. Please click on individual songs to listen.
Track 1 and track 9 contain a musical theme that is borrowed from "A Victory Song" ©Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
A pre-release EP of In a Far Away Place.
