As I wrote in my blog entry American Dreaming, 2011 was in some ways a lost year for me, due to circumstances around my immigration to the USA, which stranded me in Toronto and separated me from my wife for nine months.
In musical terms, I made the best of it by temporarily becoming a laptop musician, since I was also separated from my studio and gear. Chris Russell and I began our Memory Palace album, and I worked up some remixes and compilation pieces (for details, see American Dreaming). But the circumstances meant that three albums-in-progress (The Separate Ones, Pastimes of Creation and Nuances of Illusion) were put on hold.
So, the priority for 2012 is to see all four of those albums finished and released.
Along with that, I have to finalize the packaging for the James Johnson recycling collection Butterfly Effects, Vol. 1 (which will be a free download from the Relaxed Machinery label). It’s been an honor to be involved with this project, which will be the subject of a separate blog on release day.
Also in the pipeline: a second duo piece for the next Relaxed Machinery multi-artist compilation (Peter James gave me a gorgeous drone to work with), and an atmospheric percussion track for a respected colleague to use if he likes.
All this will conclude the first chapter in the eyes cast down story. I’ll take a break to finish up some meditational and ecstatic songs, which have been lying around for years, for my Mukunda’s Friends project. Hopefully some of them will see release on my Kalindi Music label, joining our song Lacrimosa.
The next cluster of eyes cast down releases will include a twin-guitar album, two albums of cover pieces (the second one is a longform version of one all-time favorite piece), an exciting duo project which will be announced in due course, and perhaps a live collection. At least, that’s the plan right now.
(Side note: John K-N has already razzed me about box sets, which is entirely proper and necessary to help guard against overinflated plans. I like to think that I’m just taking a Long-Term View of Things.)
Phase II will mark the end of my work in Equal Temperament (excluding possible future collaborations), as I leave behind the 12-tone equally-out-of-tune scale and dive into working with my own 64-tone Just Intonation scale, which I’ve been working out over the past two months. (That will be another separate blog entry, which I promise will not be too arcane and technical to be of actual interest to living, breathing human beings.)
There are heaps of ideas for projects, at the back of the stove.
Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!