Menagerie by Isotherme

Please note: This is a compilation album and contains mostly previously released tracks, along with two new tracks.

I created this collection of pieces to kick off my Summer 2022 season of gigs and busking events. I wanted something I could offer listeners while playing in public, something I thought represented what it is I do as a musician.

Menagerie seems a fitting title for a collection of songs as diverse as these. Here, there are a few ambient guitar pieces, some piano-led compositions, a drone piece or two, a couple classically inspired through-composed pieces, some songs with spoken words (one in French, "oui!") and others that sound like they come from outer space. Perfectly me!

There are two new tracks:

"Lullaby for the Lost" is a guitar-based melody and chord sequence I wrote in spring 2021. For this recording, I added an improvised guitar solo to flesh out the song and a piano part that dances around the main theme during the solo. Like many of us, I was quite emotionally moved at India's struggle with what they called "Covid Hell". India being a country of immense population and with such a great divide between haves and have-nots, the world was hit with the most awful news of their suffering. I added a few distorted, lo-fi guitar sounds to the solo section to reflect the confusion and chaos, Covid's weaponry against our hearts and minds.

"You Are Seawater, Revealing" is an older piece that I had never finished. I wrote it sometime in 2016, and I loved the demo so much that I couldn't abandon it completely. I just never came round to finishing it...until now. Honestly, I think I loved it so much because it was an excuse for me to use a bunch of Mellotron sounds again! I'm currently remixing this piece into something a little different for an upcoming EP, so watch this space!
A friend for whom I played the demo of this piece years ago asked me what I meant by such a dense song title: You Are Seawater, Revealing. The answer: "Don't be afraid to cry. It suits you." It suits all of us. My Catholic upbringing told me that we are dust and to dust we shall return. I think we are all seawater, actually, and one day we will all journey home to our metaphoric oceans.


Thanks for your imaginations, your hearts and your ears. I hope you find peace in this music and also find something to dream about.
Until next time...

JK, June 2022

Isotherme:
Experiments in ambient guitar, electronic musical texture, ghost ambient and sound collage.