- Salvador, Brazil As I am sitting here on the beach in Praira do Flamingo trying to ?gure out what to write as liner notes, I only can think about what keeps me coming back here to Salvador. It's all about the beach and carefree live style on the one side and the massive heavy percussion beats on the other and I can't get enough of it! It all began about a decade ago. I had started to record more and more ambient atmospheric experimental soundscapes for various ?lm commissions and was searching to ?nd the push and the rhythms that would set the whole thing on ?re. I didn't have to search for long, because I found it in Bahia, back in 2003, when I ?rst came here (a story told in the documentary 'Thomas Simon Walkabout'). - Questions And Answers I have been performing live atmospheric sound collages, by now, regularly for the last three years, back in New York City and after almost every show, I was asked similar questions: How do I create the layers; where are the beats from; how did I developed my style; etc. Well, during the performances I am not big on talking to the audience a lot, since I am playing my set pretty much as one long song, moving seamlessly from tune to tune. So, here with this album, I decided to heed to the requests and tell you guys a little bit about my process. - Orchestra? In some reviews I was called an 'one man orchestra'. It took quite a while to come to that point. I had been performing and touring with a full band for years in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Together with my lovely, awesome wife Jillie (on vocals), we must have covered close to 100 000 miles in a van criss-crossing the USA, Canada, Europe and beyond. I loved the road and rocking out with the guys, but most of the time, it came to a point when it was only about the money with my musicians and not at all about the music. Let me be clear, everybody ever going on the road with us, came back to a pay check, exactly the amount of what we agreed upon before embarking, no matter what happened out there. But still, the guys egos spun out of control, which left me to conclude that the liabilities I was facing with some musicians on the road were too unpredictable and too debilitating (I could recite a lot of stories now, but leave that for later, to my unauthorized biography). So, after a while, I knew I had to reinvent myself and that I needed to step away from the band thing for a moment in order to see things clearer overall (cut to a wide shot, me thinking on the beach...). - Next Move That said, I was looking for alternative ways to produce my sound. Experience and the self assurance I gained after years of performing and creating music, as well as new technologies, started me on the current experimental path. Wait! Let's rewind this for a second, let's go back to one speci?c incident that occurred exactly twelve years ago. - Back Story Jillie and I just had ?nished a run of shows (with Love Alien) in Europe and we were scheduled to culminate the tour with a major TV interview and concert in Tel Aviv, Israel. At the time we were working with an Israeli rhythm section, who connected us with the local promoters. So we got there and had a week break before the events. Our entourage and us decided to head down to the Sinai in Egypt and chill out at a Bedouin Camp on a beach close to Nueba. This was totally my kind of place, situated exactly on the meeting of the desert, mountains and the Red Sea. One night we were hanging out with some of the locals and this guy was playing a self fabricated instrument. A piece of wood with some wires on it. He was strumming it, playing mostly harmonic sounds and singing traditional songs. It sounded so cool, so heartfelt! This man was not a professional musician, not educated, whatsoever. He was not looking for a record deal, or was in competition with the other guys playing music on the beach. He was simply acting from his gut and he was feeling it! That's when I realized, this is it! I want to travel the world, research musical hotspots, go there and look for people, just like him, on the beaches
