I have the pleasure of sharing another cool album, to which I got to contribute in a small way.

My friend and musical kindred spirit Kris Tilbury started her Mirror of Dreams project in 2012. Kris is a singer and multi-instrumentalist, who contributed the back cover photo to my album The Separate Ones. Please check out her 2014 album Amaranthine.

In 2016, Kris invited me to record some electric 12-string guitar for two tracks in progress. At this point, both were purely atmospheric, all synths and wordless voices. I loved them and recorded several parts for each.

Fast forward to late 2018. Kris has joined forces with another old friend, multi-intrumentalist and singer Har, and Mirror of Dreams has evolved into an atmospheric/ambient rock duo.

Har was the first to broadcast both “Knife of Karma” and “Like a Riven Cloud” from The Separate Ones (the latter piece less than 24 hours after its completion), and presented the entire album premiere in 2013. Har plays guitars, basses, Chapman Stick and keyboards – and his drum programming blows away anything you’re likely to hear on radio. His releases include three live-broadcast improvised guitar jams and the science-fiction prog-rock series 2063.

So, not surprisingly, the new Mirror of Dreams album, Land of Forgotten Destiny, covers a lot of stylistic ground, from ethereal dream-rock to tribal grooves, from spacious ambiance to experimental/industrial. Taking it even further, “How Fair This Spot” is an arrangement of the song by romantic composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, one of my youthful musical heroes.

The album includes “Aphelion”, one of the pieces to which I contributed (the other is intended for release on a future project). For “Aphelion” I recorded way more than was needed or could be used, with the idea that hopefully there would be enough useful material to contribute the piece’s development. And develop it did! To go with my two 12-string parts (a looped chord progression and an EBow line), Kris and Har added several cool voice parts, some Celtic harp, and a terrific drumbeat.

I love how it turned out! My parts would have been too intense for the simple synth-voice drone I was working with, but Kris and Har’s arrangement took that intensity and ran with it, to fantastic effect. I’m simply thrilled that I got to be part of this.

That intensity runs throughout the entre album. So … give Land of Forgotten Destiny a listen. Thanks, Kris and Har!