ASCENSION OF THE LYRE

Inspired by Spock's 'Vulcan Harp', going boldly where no lyre player has gone before, this album literally aims to ascend the possibilities of the recreated lyres of antiquity into the music of the far-flung future!

The title of this album features a pun on the ancient Greek legend of the ascension of Orpheus from the Underworld (as depicted on the album cover - the most famous lyre player in the literature of Classical antiquity) and my musical mission in this album, to literally ascend the lyre from its previous status as a dusty, long-forgotten ancient museum relic; onto a new musical journey into the 21st century and beyond, literally giving it a new voice, by metamorphosing it's ancient timbre with a host of contemporary studio effects.

In creating this album, my main aim is to illustrate that the recreated lyre of antiquity also has the hidden magic to transport the listener to the distant future as well as the ancient past, a 'musical spaceship' to take the listener on a fantasy voyage to strange and remote alien worlds…

This album fulfills the primary objective of my musical mission - to ascend the iconic lyre of our ancient past into what may one day become, the musical instrument of our distant future, wherever in the solar system and beyond our descendants may one day find themselves...

Sadly, the wonderful classical lyre of antiquity fell into disuse and eventually oblivion at the end of the Dark Ages in the West, not replaced by the harp, but by the increasing preference and development of the fretted lute family of instruments, leading eventually to the evolution of the modern guitar and in modern times, the electric guitar, which was to become part of the very fabric of modern popular music we know today.

However, imagine an "Alternate Universe" - where instead, the preference may have been for the timeless lyre and as a consequence, all of the fiendish fretted lute family were the musical instruments which vanished from the musical map of the 21st century! Imagining such an "Alternate Universe", the classical lyre would have continued to have evolved, including the dawn of electric lyres (which would have become as familiar in popular music as the guitar is on our own, much poorer Universe!) What would the lyre have sounded like, then, if it had continued to develop into our present century?

In this new experimental album, therefore, it has been my aim to transport the forgotten lyre of antiquity into the 21st century musical experience and way beyond, using a selection of some of the very same effects which have made the electric guitar so popular. In such an alternate Universe, I wonder if the late great Jimi Hendrix would have also been inspired to 'set fire to the lyre'?

Sit back, and enjoy your cosmic, transcendental, psychedelic musical journey to an alternate universe of sound!