In an hour and a half’s time, Sun and Moon, Sea and Land will magically appear on all music stores for you to listen to at your leisure. It’s an album of pieces that I’ve practised, tweaked, performed and recorded many, many times, but it still feels fresh and new to me, which I think is a good thing.
This is not the first time I’ve released an album, but the feeling never really goes away. Maybe it’s different if you’re working with a big record label who have the promotional firepower and the smarts to launch it in exactly the right way, but I imagine even the biggest artists still get somewhat nervous around these milestones. Will others appreciate the things you yourself love about the work? And the things you’re less confident about… how many listeners will flag those? Also, more practically, is there going to be some technical glitch and the music just… won’t appear?
A lot has changed in my life since I wrote the first piece for this album. There’s often a bit of journalistic/PR pressure to impose some sort of narrative on a record for promotional purposes, but it doesn’t mean a narrative doesn’t exist. Ultimately, composing music takes time, time passes and, with it, things happen which the album’s creation phase will encapsulate. But writing music is not purely an act of observation- the act of composing and playing can have a reciprocal impact on the life being led. When I play any of this album’s pieces now, I am not only reminded of a moment or scene- a sweltering summer’s day, a quiet studio after midnight, a cold wind blowing over a prairie- but also of the way those pieces have shaped my life and music going forward.
This is all a long way of saying: of course I care what happens to this album. Of course I care how it’s received. But also: this album means a huge amount to me, and however it ‘performs’ in the wider world, that will not change.