My new album

PLACES OF UNKNOWING has arrived

link to LP (release date July 18th 2025)

https://lnk.to/placesofunknowing

WOO!!

Let's get on with the show! Meet Pascal :)

What a treat it has been to welcome this man into my life

Not only did he give me confidence and skills to play the piano for the first time in my life,

he toiled to transcribe my vocal multitracks and save them from dying on the hard drive.

He sat with me and the recording crew in the studio for 5 hours to assist our cellist as this same song took shape

With patience and encouragement that’s very rare and deeply contagious. 

Speaking my language just as fluently as the classic players

He’s been the bridge to many lands

This new LP - Places of Unknowing that’s OUT July 18th 2025 

Would not have existed without Pascal. It’s as simple as that. 

He set the ball rolling and helped me so so much along the way. 

I was watching the live show footage last night. 

The concert of the record that was performed in Nashville March 2025 with a wonderful group of musicians.

Some of them were professional like Rob Burger, Ethan Jodziewicz and Lee Vinson but many students joined from Blair college of music.

Pascal was working at the school at the time and drummed up interest, found us a room to practice in and kept it all together with so little time. 

He not only found all these great players but he then remade arrangements from the album for woodwind 

Beautiful arrangements. 

I was in tears last night. Just thinking of that night and all the time leading up to it 

It took so long and so much energy to pull it together. 

Life has moved from that time and now Pascal is leaving to MIT in Boston with his wife and kids

I couldn’t be happier for them !!! I mean come on. MIT!!! 

He really is one of the most inspiring people I’ve met and I’m so happy to get to share this pod and the window it opens to his world. 

With one grammy under his belt already, watch out for him 

This will not be the last time you hear about Pascal. 

He’s the real deal. Im very lucky to call him a friend x 

____

I thought it might be useful to share some links to musicians Pascal references in this chat as many are new to me and maybe to you too :)

LINKSSSSS!!!

https://miguelzenon.com/videos/

https://www.daniloperez.com/video

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geri_Allen

https://www.aaronparks.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Mehldau

https://www.kurtrosenwinkel.com

https://milestilmann.bandcamp.com/album/3d-concepts

Thomas Adès: In Seven Days

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2B4KOGyTTk

https://www.donnachadennehy.com/discography

Louis Andriessen - Hoketus (1977)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=palDwGpg3ME

He lives across the street and happens to be one of my fave musicians ever. Sometimes life is just like that right?

He's played in so many rolls over the years both as a solo artist and film composer and as a player backing the heaviest like Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Marianne Faithfull, John Zorn and this bloke Jamie Lidell

Yep, he's opened me up to so much great music and is one of the best improvisers I've ever heard. Just flowing with the music. He sits at the piano and he's away. With the muses that circle him.

Great to present this audiobook length chronology for the archives.

Rob has been such an important part of my musical world here in America.

He's all over my upcoming album "Places of Unknowing" and throughout this chat I play excepts from the record that were played by the man himself.

here we go!!!

ITS OUT!!!

YES!!!

It’s hard to believe tbh after all this time but indeed the first song from my long talked about LP “Places of Unknowning” is OUT 

There’s a vinyl pre-order (and digi pre-thing) for the full album and links to stream this early track the “The Center” here:

https://todo.ochre.store

Video from the live performance of The Center here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxxUxtHkE1

You might be curious how it all came to be....

Where are these wild and powerful words coming from for example?

Well I’m glad you asked since I got to sit down and record a chat with my delightful wife Lindsey Rome who wrote this record with me. 

Specifically, she wrote the words and I set them to music. A marriage of it’s own!

She’s A lady I adore 

A lady I am constantly inspired by.

A lady that has no end to her creativity. 

She’s written a lot of material with me at this point and it’s always been super rewarding to work in this way but I will say that NOTHING I’ve made with her has ever been like this.

I felt like I was handed these precious truths and intimate revelations to try and merge with the realm of music. 

The fact I know her so well and care so deeply was both the only way to make this so rich and potent but also proved to be quite a challenge to get right. 

Needless to say Im mightily excited finally get to share the fruits of our collaboration at long last. 

It really was a team effort between the two of us and all the more sweet to send it off as a document of this time 

Hope you enjoy hearing how it all came to be from my 

best friend and true love

Lindsey Rome 

I got hip to Cristobal’s work thanks to my recent TV addiction. 

I inhaled all 3 seasons of the white lotus and I think I was only able to get so greedy because of the EXCELLENT music. 

I usually get repelled by TV scores tnh. I feel like I know the tricks and the tones and the emotional devices and I end up paying attention to them in a bad way.

My agitation stops me from getting swept up and carried away. Not so with this man’s work. 

I just felt like it was so deeply connected to the lands and the mystery and power of our animalistic shadows that ride in the narrative. I was taken aback and taken away. 

It’s been a long time since I found myself loving a soundtrack. I had to know more and thankfully Cristobal (I butcher his name in the pod btw to my shame!) has been fantastic to chat with. I reached out, we set a date to chat and it just flowed. I love that. 

Hope you enjoy the fascinating insights he shares. He’s so humble about his ways but he clearly is no pushover, knowing what he believes in and fighting for that. 

I loved this hang. Hope it gets to all to at least buy a shaker if you don’t own one!

Took me a while this one.

Sadly, as many of you may know, I lost my Dad.

It was a very long time coming and I was "prepared" but of course death has a power that yields a unique power and the grief has hit in waves. The first week was a kind of exhaustion, then I got to feel the sadness and the reality hit me in a new and more profound way. I talk about it here in the pod so I'll not linger too long in text form. Needless to say, it's been an intensely emotional time.

Shortly after this news I was thrown into full preparation for the first live show for the LP that is going to be announced (finally!) next month.

I was grateful to have my passions engaged in deep musical focus. Thanks to my wife and the amazing players that can to support me, the show was a truly beautiful event. Not one I'll forget.

So with all that going on, the pod has taken the back burner.

I had been meaning to air this Bibio episode for a long time.

A whole other perspective on the man compared to the first encounter. 

I hope you enjoy the west country rambles!

Thanks to all of you that shared your kind words with me about my Dad

love you guys

x

I met Matt Ross-Spang thanks to Mark Rubel.

Mark was an amazing knowledge and super generous chap who sadly died not so long ago. RIP to that legend.

I'll never forget that trip to visit some of America's most amazing studios.

We toured most of the iconic rooms in Memphis which is the city where Matt Ross-Spang has always resided.

We went to Sun where Elvis, Johnny Cash, Howlin’ Wolf all recorded and then on to Sam Philips recording service which Matt helped restore to its former glory. What a place! Just full of history and so beautiful both aesthetically and sonically.

Matt has had quite the journey.

He started interning at Sun Studios as a teen and now he has been awarded the key to the city of Memphis! 

Somewhere in the middle of this wild ride is what we spend of our time chatting about in this pod.

From humble beginnings to mixing Elvis, getting those Grammy’s and the key to the city of Memphis, Matt has seen and heard an awful lot of good stuff!

________________________

Music for this episode comes courtesy of Indy500 check it here:

https://indy500.bandcamp.com/ 

________________________

This episode is sponsored by the MLC or The Mechanical Licensing Collective.

They’re a nonprofit organization that’s revolutionizing how creators get paid their mechanical streaming royalties from platforms like Spotify and Apple Music in the U.S.

Every month, The MLC collects the streaming data and royalties from those platforms, matches the money to the creator who has earned it, and then pays out the royalties due.

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What a treat it was to speak with the absolutely wonderful Suzanne Ciani who’s really a unique and outstanding woman in the world of electronic music.

We get into her early use of psychedelics and chat about spirituality and the inner “little voice” which is her guide in all things. We discuss eternal sounds, how her LP “Seven Waves” was constructed from a huge manuscript.

We listen to her snoring cat and chat tennis.

In fact there’s a lot of tennis talk here which is definitely a first and an area Suzanne is very passionate about.

Of course we talk about the exceptional Don Buchla and some of the excentric ways in which his modules behave even from one unit to the next. We also explore his attire.

It’s amazing to think of the time she came up in time when synthesizers were first emerging and nobody had heard these vast, pure and electric vibrations that were really unlike anything that had come before.

In this day and age so much it’s taken for granted and yet it all returns in the end to the sea.

To the ocean waves which of course she’s so known for coaxing in synthetic form so deftly.

Im so glad I got to spend a little time with the brilliant Suzanne Ciani.

____________

Thanks to Ableton for their kind support.

They are the show sponsors and I do a little nitty ad slot showing off the excellent MPE control possibilities of the Push3 when paired with a compact 7U modular rig via the expert sleepers ES10 ADAT to Euro 8 in 8 out module.

Check the push at

ableton.com

And in fact they are offer a healthy discount to HOWA listeners.

It’s a coupon code VALID TIL THE END OF FEB 2025

Use code

HOWAP320

At checkout for 20% off the Push3

!!!

YO ho ho

ah.. it's a bit late for that. Sorry this WAS supposed to be a Christmas pod. The so called "escape pod" but I got struck with a brutal illness that is only just waning. I shan't linger on it as it's dull but I was down. Down, down, down like the pointer sisters are clearly singing about in "automatic".

This pod is brought to you remotely from Sedona Arizona. It might sound a bit less polished as a result but it's the content that matters :)

Welcome to this humble whee ramble with Roger Eno, who's had a long and successful career in the olde music game. He's left behind some mellow corkers.

If you've never heard “An Ending (Ascent)”  from the album "Apollo: Atmospheres and soundtracks" for example... you simply must.

It's a true timeless beauty. The kind of track that if you were to have made it, you'd be chilling for the rest of your days. Quite literally. There's something utterly magical about that one and it really feels like a unique sound only possible thanks to Roger's sensibility. Of course it was a collaboration with Daniel Lanois and his rather famous sibling.

It must be strange to have a brother like Brian. As Roger mentions in this pod, if he's ever getting full of himself he reflects on Brian being Bowie's producer and it's all put into stark perspective. A silly thing to linger on of course and we dont get too into that for long but it's there.

This pod chat is mostly about him waking up and getting into music and literally how to get out ones way to let that inner music rush forth. Damn good advice nestled in this one I reckon.

Happy listening and see you in 2025!

x

Id often hear about this man during my stint in Berlin in the mid 2000s.

Mostly that he had an amazing live show... who was this man?

There was a sense in my mind that he was a gothic mystery, a dark figure that coaxed mystical melodies from the tarot and such but it seems like he’s a sensitive and passionate follower of his own North Star.

 His upbringing in Denmark really captured my imagination.

Partly just reflecting on the simpler times and remembering my own childhood in the sticks and how music was such an elixir to a world with a lot less demands on the modern, dwindling attention. T

he power of radio to educate and mix it up, when things were all jumbled together a little would be one example of the way it was different then.

We get into that and I think it’s actually a huge deal. I would argue it’s the reason we have the music of Trentemøller at all.

 Anyway I’m running into a pool of the past here. I suppose sometimes that’s what a chat will do. Funnily enough I find his music to be exploring contrasts, paradoxes, and themes of reminiscence without nostalgia. Quite a challenge! There’s something familiar to the tones (especially the chorus which is a major sonic stamp on this music. It turns out Anders owns over 50 chorus pedals!!! I mean WHAT?) but the drums are fresh and the sound is vital in a refreshing way. Dare I say it almost feels light. Much lighter than I’d imagined it being.

Also he’s a song writer first and foremost and although the tone palette is crucial, the song always ends up being the main event and I tip my hat to the man for this. It’s not easy!

Lovely stuff. Hope you enjoy our rambles.

____ Music for EP133 comes from Clocks and Barometers.

The music you hear peppered through the episode is from a record called “learning through investigation”

Clocks and Barometers is a collaborative project between Dive Reflex Service and Lupo which began in the summer of 2023.

Excellent stuff which I shall not try to describe seeing as they kindly provided me with a link so you can jolly well go and have a listen!!

HERE is the link

**** There is a wild 50% off strore wide sale for all my vinyl and merch until the end of the year!

https://shorturl.at/FXgkf

This was one of the most entertaining chats Ive had in ages tbh.

I had no real idea who or what Eric was about before this and it turns out we would get along famously. Plus he lives here. Wild. 

What a fun hang this was. I tell you what, a huge part of it was that it was in my studio and thus NOT on zoom and guess what? the human connection is WAY better without digital mitigation. Who would have thought?

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. 

He's a really badass musician and started very very young. His first main gig was with Adrian Belew !! I mean WHAT? I trust you know Adrian who plays in King Crimson and Talking Heads (Remain in Light anyone?? ooof!!!)

He's the drummer of the excellent Dr Dog and he's worked with so many cool folks like Daniel Rossen, Nels Cline oh and you know Taylor Swift.... to name but a few.

Wild knowledge of music and a bright mind. 

Enjoy