PALOR: for vox and trip-electric orchestra.

PALOR is Latin for "wander" and an acronym for the five songs on the album. PALOR illustrates the author's journey through time, space, and emotion. Using landscape as metaphor, each song features a unique set of programmed and guest instrumentals from balalaika to horn to full orchestra.

1. Pull Me Down
2. Air To Breathe
3. Lose My Mind
4. On The Moon
5. Right For You


These songs came into existence at the end of 2009, more than 10 years ago, after I spent only around a day on each of them - a rare flourish of output.

But due to countless wanderings and doubts, journeys, and coming through more than a few mental hurdles, it took me this long to loop back to them and finish the arrangements, mixes, recordings, and all the bits and pieces so they’d come together as polished recordings. (Even after that, the real finishing took months, years somehow.) Those wanderings, doubts, and journeys are, in fact, what the songs are about. Think about that! The songs themselves were a premonition of things I was to actually go through, before expressing them. I think the order of the songs is also a bit of magic. I introduce different instrumental groups in each successive song, and wander in the spaces they represent - both in place and in mind.

The songs are set to elements or scenes to match or symbolize their particular message or mood.

First, in “Pull Me Down,” we’re on the edge of a cliff, then into the sky… a premonition, a knowing but also fearing. Even as I write this, I feel it - we are often plagued with doubt, even in our bravest moments.

Then we’re in water, surrounded by reaching limbs, ones who cling and suck the energy away and try to lure you into the soggy comfort of a strange in-between, a metaphor for our own trappings from which we yearn to be free. This is “Air to Breathe.”

Next is “Lose My Mind,” set on the road of solitude. Sometimes the only way forward is along a lonely stretch of highway, letting the status of our minds unfold to make sense of our suffering, conviction, and even destruction. Trying to keep it together in this mundane world, until…

“On The Moon” takes us to the moon! There are other realms, other places of enlightenment where we can oversee our own actions on this earth. And we are playing, here! The lightness you feel with perspective will buoy your mind.

Finally, the journey through the forest in “Right For You.” There is no one but you who can face your own demons; walk your own path; learn your own lessons; and find your own way. You will come out. We all do.

I crafted these lyrical poems along with every last orchestral arrangement and folktronica beat - so please enjoy discovering layer upon layer of meaning.

Many thanks to those who always knew I’d finish these eventually, and to the musicians who helped add life to the largely synthesized ensemble. And to everyone who is on their own journey, may you keep going and trust that the meanderings are all part of the bigger picture.