“Skin Deep” delivers electrifying jazz

skindeep-coverIt’s here. A new album to start off the new year, this time going back to my Gemini Soul roots with a mix of funk, fusion, smooth and cool jazz. Produced by bassist and former bandmate Andre Akinyele, the music reflects influences from such artists as Esperanza Spalding, Herbie Hancock, Joe Sample, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Ramsey Lewis, and Vince Guaraldi. The following video interview introduces the music, which is now available from iTunes, and other online retailers. Continue reading →

Specters of Twilight

Specters of Twilight CDAfter a four-year hiatus, I’m getting ready to release my sixth CD, Specters of Twilight. It’s a major departure from my previous music, reflecting the influence of Nine Inch Nails, MeShell Ndegeocello (The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams) and Tori Amos (Venus and Back): industrial, strange, anti-pop. The music consists of fragments of melody, distorted sounds, obsessive ostinati and recurring themes that linger briefly before vanishing. Less visible links connect the songs, too, with passages from some tracks manipulated electronically and reincarnated in other tracks. Continue reading →

Music of the spheres

Crab NebulaThe Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who lived during the fifth century B.C., theorized that the planets and stars moved according to mathematical equations. Each planet, by its orbit, produced a note based on its distance from the earth, which he believed was the center of the universe. Like the mathematical subdivisions of a vibrating string, which produce specific pitches, the musical notes of the planets in motion produced a symphony: the Music of the Spheres.

The planets do indeed produce music, though not quite in the way that Pythagoras believed. Each object in the universe produces radio waves, and while there is no sound in the vacuum of space — sound needing air in which to propagate waves — the radio waves can be translated into sound, just as we listen to a radio. I’ve taken a variety of sounds from space — pulsars and sounds generated by Earth, Jupiter and Saturn — and created a contemporary “Music of the Spheres.” All sounds are purely from objects in space; I’ve added nothing else. Click on the player below to listen. Continue reading →