Ah. Remember the good old days of concept albums? Well, they're back with a vengeance and a modern twist. Think prog, think fusion, think electronica with ethereal vocals - Thunk? - Ok, go listen.

16 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Progressive Rock, ELECTRONIC: Soundscapes



Details:
The "Degrees of Light" project first started to take shape back in 2004 shortly after the release of the "Fuse" CD.
The first half of the album is taken up by the 30min concept "First Orbit", which sort of happened when I started thinking about what it must have been like to be the first man ever shot into space while not really knowing the chances of getting back or even what the effects of weightlessness would have on a human being. The pioneering spirit and faith in your ground crew (who keep control of the Vostok 1 spacecraft during the flight) would need to have been total. So many firsts, so many unknowns and nearly not making it! Just before re-entry, the strap attaching the service module to the capsule failed to let go resulting in the two sections spinning out of control until the strap burnt through from the heat of re-entry.
But more than the technical achievements of this flight, this is about the man [Yuri Gagarin] and the part his thoughts and emotions must have played while seeing the blue planet from a perspective that no one had experienced before and only a select few since.
âNocturnesâ, the second half of the CD, came about as a result of some Internet collaborations I was involved with at the time [i.e. sending a sound file to another artist and having them record a vocal track, this in turn would usually give me a few more ideas to add to the track and so on, until we were both happy with the results].
Guests Maria Rogers, Gabrielle Agachiko and Penny Moorhed all did some great work by tapping into the ambience exactly as I imagined, actually, better than I imagined and the three songs that they helped produce were totally transformed as a result. These along with some moody (and quirky) nocturnal instrumentals completed the whole project which feels as though itâs taken half of my life to produce.
Has it only been 3 years?