Nyingma Waves by Tom Orange

What gear does a genre-bending multi-instrumentalist take on his second trip overseas teaching English? Same as the first trip: none. The difference this time however was significant; instead of being culture shocked into a creative slump, I actively sought out and made use of whatever I could find. (I combined this approach with an equally aggressive pursuit of field recordings, which were compiled and released as Issue 4 of our audio zine http://thebrewingluminous.bandcamp.com.)

The search yielded fruitful hardware and software: a Yamaha digital upright keyboard, a highly touted free synthesizer app that satisfied my long-held curiosity previously kept at bay by intimidation and price, and a seemingly cheesy drum machine app that actually had surprisingly good organic tones. Lacking pro recording equipment as well, I made the recordings lo-fi using an iPhone 5S voice memo recorder (64kbps m4a files) and produced in Audacity, all during four months when I lived and worked on the campus of the Sarnath International Nyingma Institute, Uttar Pradesh, India. http:www.sinibridge.org

The tunes alternate between ambient/drone synthesizer improvisations and jazz-rock keyboard and drum duos. Love and thanks to all those who heard them as they were in the process of being created and shared. Jhumaki (or jhumke, Hindi for "earrings") is the odd one out, our dog who had surgery to remove a tumor on her leg last month.