"100 Pieces" and "100 Ghosts".

Greetings friends. I want to just take a few moments to share with you events and experiences that have influenced the direction and mood of my recent release "100 pieces" and the companion instrumental track "100 ghosts" which will also be released by the time you are reading this or shortly after.

These tracks although different in many ways come from the same place emotionally and conceptually, written and recorded during a time recently when particular moments and tragic events involving family members really bought me to my knees. Unfortunately most families will experience similar situations and tragedy with the passage of time and the cycle of life, it is never easy and we all cope or don't cope in our own way.

I thought if I give a bit of an insight it may help people connect with the music more and also to express that they aren't songs that are dark and melancholy just for the sake of it.

Over the past 2 years I have lost my Mum to cancer and seen my Dad fight the awful effects of Parkinson's Disease and more recently Dementia.

100 Pieces is a song about the emotions one feels immediately after receiving unexpected and terrible news regarding such illnesses, in particular my family being told in late December after being isolated from Dad due to COVID that his illness had progressed to the extent that he would be entering permanent aged care immediately and not returning to his home. This wasn't news anyone was expecting....not yet, and it hit me hard.

I felt broken. It's taken a while to get over that particular day which felt like the final straw after some personal struggles, Mum's passing and Dad's ongoing fight with health issues.

And so it takes time to deal with it, and as I always say it's "one day at a time".

But now having released the two tracks I feel it's time to move on emotionally and creatively. Dad has settled into a wonderful facility designed specifically for dementia/parkinson's sufferers, so after 5 months we (his family) can breath again.

The sadness is always there as anyone who has lost or is losing a loved one to these terrible diseases knows but life must go on and my family and I are grateful that Dad is getting the care he now needs and we will adapt to his new way of life.

So during this period of heartache came "100 pieces" based around a musical idea I had during lockdown last year, influenced by some 70s and 80s art rock and finished with lyrics inspired by events described above.

Also out of the tumultuous times came what would become "100 ghosts", an instrumental drawn from the same place of emotional despair as "100 pieces", with a similar experimental edge. I had planned to release them together but I didn't want to detract the focus from either so a month or so separates them but they are in my heart and mind companion pieces and so I have tied them together loosely in name and artwork.

I hope this little blog is useful in interpreting these tracks, it's important to me to tell the story of how they came to be, I didn't want people to think I was just this miserable guy being dark for the sake of it. Hopefully it will give you a better understanding of how and why these songs sound the way they do.....the next ones will be different.

And thank you so much for taking the time to listen.