It's been a minute since I've done one of these, so pardon my tardiness, but I do believe I have a decent excuse. I've been on quite a roll. I've been songwriting. HR2 ended up taking most of my 2022-2023, and 2024 has been no different with "Holy Blood" and "This Fruit", thus continuing this invisible momentum of inspiration from the cosmos.Â
I was having coffee earlier today and someone I knew asked me if I felt inspired as of late and my response was an emphatic yes. You see, over the years, I have realized that I cannot take for granted what the universe feeds me. At any given moment, "inspiration" could all cease and leave me in the pits of "writer's block". So we keep on rolling.
1 - A Beautiful Catastrophe
2 - Diamond Eyes
3 - Love Will Peel the Night
4 - It's Just Not the Same
5 - Helium
6 - Promises
7 - Your Perfume
8 - At the Water's Edge
Hopeless Romantic II was therapeutic, to say the least. I was coming out of a bad breakup and the making of the entire album was the equivalent of seeing 8 shrinks. I was in bad shape, mentally & emotionally, but just like before (Just for You, Eros the album, Sans Red), music has helped me get through the storm. HR2 was as genuine as I got. I didn't mince anything on that album, every melody, every word you heard was legit, pain on paper or, in this case, digital wav files. I don't want to elaborate anymore on the particulars of each song, but what I will say is that without this album I would still be sulking.
Shortly after my completion of HR2 and upon feeling like myself again, I got caught up in the whirlwind of politics like I do from time to time as a middle-aged man. In this case, I was appalled and absorbed in the global state of conflict and, more specifically, the Holy War that is transpiring in the East. From the Azeris slaughtering helpless Armenians to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it was obvious we were and still are going through biblical times. With that I wrote "Holy Blood", a song dedicated to the innocent bystanders that have fallen to the sword of religious revenge. "An eye for an eye in an exchange for paradise."
Finally, after all the hoopla of being immersed politically, I stumbled on a song that inspired me to revisit my "Translations" project that I had left unattended for over ten years. I had always wanted to take international songs and re-imagine the lyrics in my own translations. I had done it with a couple of Giorgios Mazonakis tracks, a Greek singer known for his huge hit ZILEVO, which I translated to "I'm Jealous", which made its rounds in the LA club circuit in the early 2000's with VIZA.
The song that brought forth that urge to revisit my TRANSLATIONS project was Carla Morrison's "Difruto", a beautiful ballad that, when I first listened, moved me entirely to the point where I wrote my own rendition within a few hours. I can't explain how much I adore her voice and the song. I just hope my rendition holds its own via comparison.
You can listen to all my work on all available DSP's or here on my website. Thx for reading.