I’m excited - and a little melancholy - to announce that on February 27th I’ll be releasing the 6th and final Candlepark Stars album, called “The Odyssey.” When I started writing this style back in 2009 it was a really fun experiment for me: I wanted to get out of orchestral writing for a bit and try something different. I loved stuff like Explosions in the Sky and I wanted to try creating emotional music with things like electric guitars and synths instead of my usual orches. Tra/piano combo.
The Sun Malaysia
I released those first two albums on iTunes and did the usual kinda-sorta promo stuff for it: making some iMixes to hopefully introduce it to ears who would like it, and visiting MySpace sites for similar bands (remember MySpace??) and posting about it there. I never thought it would sell or that people would like it, but that was OK: I was doing it more as a fun side thing for myself and it was rewarding to write something that was just for me. It didn’t need any specific form or follow a brief, I could just write. And that’s how I ended up with some pieces that were almost 10 minutes long! When you can write freeform you want to let things breathe.
Music becomes more about the emotional ride than about structure or timing. I didn’t realize it had been 6 years since my last full-length album, but as I thought about it it made sense: I promised listeners in the beginning that I would never phone in an album: I would only write one if I felt like writing one, and it’s taken a while for “I have time between jobs to write this now” and “I feel like writing a new album” to coincide.
That finally happened last fall and the end result is “The Odyssey” and I absolutely love it. If you play all of the albums back-to-back in their order of release, they play like a complete story. The pre-order should be on iTunes/Amazon on the 20th or 21st and the album is available to purchase on Feb 27th. In June I’ll be releasing it to Spotify, Pandora & Tidal. I truly hope you’ll love this album as much as I do. It's been a while since I've posted. I've been busy with my other music gigs (check out my score for the film 'Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry' on all digital platforms!
) and with regular-life stuff. Back when I started writing CPS tunes under that name — it was this time 9 years ago when I started writing “Shimmer and Gold” and “Very Big Sky” — it was just a fun side project and I wanted to explore writing post-rock but with a cinemati. The idea was that it would be blurry nostalgic music: like music that would underscore an old 8mm retrospective of your life that would appear at the end of a movie. Emotionally resonant but modern, and using electric guitars and guitar effects as the base. And with a touch of Americana and wide open spaces because I was having a bit of homesickness for the place I grew up.
I had been back to my hometown in Illinois and was appreciating it with a very different set of eyes after living so many years away in NYC (and now Los Angeles). I was surprised that anyone found those first 2 albums on iTunes, and that music developed a small but loyal following. I liked the break from my normal style and I really loved the feeling of the tunes in those first 2 albums and I figured I would end up writing more of them, so I made two rules for myself for any future albums. 1) Only joy, no darkness.
2) I’m only going to write new music when I’m feeling it, not just because I feel pressure to release a new album. This means that I’ll only write new CPS music when I feel moved to do it, because I never want someone to say “yeah, that latest album isn’t as good as the other ones.” I don’t want the quality to slip. Well, relying on inspiration is a tough thing! And it doesn’t follow any sort of schedule.
But life has quieted down and I’m in sort of a retrospective mood lately and feeling the need for some quiet and solitude, so I started tinkering around and then found a sound I really liked which led me to a new idea which found me spending some really zen time hunched over my keyboard. And I realized “Ya know, I think it’s time to start that next album.” When I get inspired to write something new what that looks like is that I get a craving to dive back in and immerse myself. Aaaaaaand that craving is back. So there it is.:) I’ve only just started and I don’t know how long it will take, but the new album is in the works.
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My guess is that it’s going to be more like the original “Shimmer & Gold” album with some touches of “We Give and We Get” because that’s what it’s feeling like right now. So I’ll keep you posted through this page as things progress. You guys might be familiar with - like me with my Candlepark Stars stuff, Drew is a one-man ensemble. On the 10th anniversary of his first album, 'The Sound of Lights When Dim' he remastered the original album and then offered a few of his friends their choice at doing a remix of one of his pieces from that album. I've never done a remix before and I really love his piece 'The Delicate Sound of Silence' - so I added my own stamp to it and boy did we end u.
P with a winner. Style-wise it's part me and part Candlepark Stars. There's also a mix on there by our friend Ben who is another one-man post-rock group called (I LOVE HIS STUFF - GO LISTEN TO IT). You can find it on iTunes and Amazon as well as Bandcamp and all of the other usual places.
I’m excited - and a little melancholy - to announce that on February 27th I’ll be releasing the 6th and final Candlepark Stars album, called “The Odyssey.” When I started writing this style back in 2009 it was a really fun experiment for me: I wanted to get out of orchestral writing for a bit and try something different. I loved stuff like Explosions in the Sky and I wanted to try creating emotional music with things like electric guitars and synths instead of my usual orches. Tra/piano combo. I released those first two albums on iTunes and did the usual kinda-sorta promo stuff for it: making some iMixes to hopefully introduce it to ears who would like it, and visiting MySpace sites for similar bands (remember MySpace??) and posting about it there. I never thought it would sell or that people would like it, but that was OK: I was doing it more as a fun side thing for myself and it was rewarding to write something that was just for me.
It didn’t need any specific form or follow a brief, I could just write. Irox 2000 manual. And that’s how I ended up with some pieces that were almost 10 minutes long! When you can write freeform you want to let things breathe.
Music becomes more about the emotional ride than about structure or timing. I didn’t realize it had been 6 years since my last full-length album, but as I thought about it it made sense: I promised listeners in the beginning that I would never phone in an album: I would only write one if I felt like writing one, and it’s taken a while for “I have time between jobs to write this now” and “I feel like writing a new album” to coincide. That finally happened last fall and the end result is “The Odyssey” and I absolutely love it. If you play all of the albums back-to-back in their order of release, they play like a complete story.
The pre-order should be on iTunes/Amazon on the 20th or 21st and the album is available to purchase on Feb 27th. In June I’ll be releasing it to Spotify, Pandora & Tidal. I truly hope you’ll love this album as much as I do.
It's been a while since I've posted. I've been busy with my other music gigs (check out my score for the film 'Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry' on all digital platforms! ) and with regular-life stuff. Back when I started writing CPS tunes under that name — it was this time 9 years ago when I started writing “Shimmer and Gold” and “Very Big Sky” — it was just a fun side project and I wanted to explore writing post-rock but with a cinemati. The idea was that it would be blurry nostalgic music: like music that would underscore an old 8mm retrospective of your life that would appear at the end of a movie. Emotionally resonant but modern, and using electric guitars and guitar effects as the base.
And with a touch of Americana and wide open spaces because I was having a bit of homesickness for the place I grew up. I had been back to my hometown in Illinois and was appreciating it with a very different set of eyes after living so many years away in NYC (and now Los Angeles). I was surprised that anyone found those first 2 albums on iTunes, and that music developed a small but loyal following. I liked the break from my normal style and I really loved the feeling of the tunes in those first 2 albums and I figured I would end up writing more of them, so I made two rules for myself for any future albums.
1) Only joy, no darkness. 2) I’m only going to write new music when I’m feeling it, not just because I feel pressure to release a new album.
This means that I’ll only write new CPS music when I feel moved to do it, because I never want someone to say “yeah, that latest album isn’t as good as the other ones.” I don’t want the quality to slip. Well, relying on inspiration is a tough thing! And it doesn’t follow any sort of schedule. But life has quieted down and I’m in sort of a retrospective mood lately and feeling the need for some quiet and solitude, so I started tinkering around and then found a sound I really liked which led me to a new idea which found me spending some really zen time hunched over my keyboard.
And I realized “Ya know, I think it’s time to start that next album.” When I get inspired to write something new what that looks like is that I get a craving to dive back in and immerse myself. Aaaaaaand that craving is back. So there it is.:) I’ve only just started and I don’t know how long it will take, but the new album is in the works. My guess is that it’s going to be more like the original “Shimmer & Gold” album with some touches of “We Give and We Get” because that’s what it’s feeling like right now. So I’ll keep you posted through this page as things progress.
You guys might be familiar with - like me with my Candlepark Stars stuff, Drew is a one-man ensemble. On the 10th anniversary of his first album, 'The Sound of Lights When Dim' he remastered the original album and then offered a few of his friends their choice at doing a remix of one of his pieces from that album.
I've never done a remix before and I really love his piece 'The Delicate Sound of Silence' - so I added my own stamp to it and boy did we end u. P with a winner. Style-wise it's part me and part Candlepark Stars. There's also a mix on there by our friend Ben who is another one-man post-rock group called (I LOVE HIS STUFF - GO LISTEN TO IT).
You can find it on iTunes and Amazon as well as Bandcamp and all of the other usual places.
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