Over the Moon

The last few weeks have seen a whirlwind of activity - all of it leading to the release of Reflections Below, the first single from my forthcoming album. But before we get to that, I thought I'd share the process with you first.

When considering the theme of this next album, I thought about how "Evensong" and "Arcadia" formed a journey from conception to death and beyond to the afterlife (from a medieval perspective). Since "Arcadia" had concluded with the main character just crossing the threshold of Heaven, I researched the medieval ideas about Heaven, and discovered the belief in 10 Levels moving out in concentric circles from the earth, starting with the Moon and ending at The Empyrean, which is the dwelling place of God.

This sounded like a whole album to me! Think of it - ten tracks that could take you on a journey through the celestial spheres.

So with that, I began working on the "Moon" track. This ended up taking longer than I expected, but I eventually found the perfect approach to the piano (and the piano sound) which then led me into the music. Once the music was flowing, I added a Moog solo to the center section, and before long, the track was done and ready for mixing and mastering. You can hear the results by clicking the cover art below:

While I was in the midst of writing "Reflections Below", my wife and I began planning for our trip to Namibia this summer. It has long been our dream to visit this magical country and to experience the night sky completely free of light pollution during the new moon, and we were able to book our trip for early September.

Besides the desert under a perfect night sky, one of the other highlights of the visit will be our stop in Sandwich Harbour, which is famous for its ancient sand dunes that end at the ocean.

This promises to be a life-changing, magical journey, and I can't wait to share stories and photos with you. Even though this trip is 7 months away, I've spent so much time researching and booking the trip that I feel almost like I've been there already. You can hear the influence of the desert in the music that I'm now creating for the next track. More on that later!