2025 is off to a roaring start, with two albums completed in March. The first, Light Echoes, is available now.
Lately, the recurring urge to sit down at my keyboards and just improvise has been rearing up, and the time felt right to return to that world. This is how the eyes cast down project began, with four spontaneous, late-night synth jams in early 2004. An edit of the last one, “Last of His Breed,” was released on two compilation albums in 2012.
If nothing else, “banging around” in this way is great for keeping the creative energy flowing. I thought it would be a terrific bonus if enough good pieces surfaced to warrant an album. (Looks like the Law of the 100 Monkeys with Keyboards is for real!)
So history repeated (and bettered) itself, with four new spontaneous pieces coming along at shorter and shorter intervals as the momentum grew, making Light Echoes a synth counterpart to my improvised guitar album The White Island. I arranged the album as one long continuous flow; it’s High Time I did that… in fact the pieces came along in the order in which they appear on the album – it was that natural a process.
Each time, I started with just a key or mode. There’s one minor key, and one each of Dorian, Mixolydian and Locrian modes.
I will certainly continue in this improvisational mode, and hopefully there will be more releases like this. This album could have been larger, but these four pieces feel complete in themselves, so here they are. Now I’ll look for different ways to approach this practice, to avoid Too Much Repetition (one hopes!).
My wife Daci gave me four terrific photos, which made for some work arriving at the right cover (though the font was a no-brainer). This is my sixth album to be graced by her work.
Light Echoes is dedicated to the memory of Greg Bear, a visionary soul whose brilliant creative work I’ve been delighted to discover.
“Penumbra” is for my daughter Janina, and was recorded on her birthday. Apparently the mid-March lunar eclipse must take some of the blame. This unavoidably inspired the follow-up piece, “Umbra,” which happened a few days later.
Light Echoes is avaiolable at my Bandcamp page, here.
The other new album will be released in June. Details in due course.
Track List:
- Corona 14.52
- Lagrange Point 19.16
- Penumbra 18.52
- Umbra 20.04