Leif Vollebekk - Twin Solitude - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Whereas Twin Solitude was about self-reflection, New Ways is about engaging and changing, touching and being touched. It's a physical record, with louder and tighter grooves, and the rawest lyrics the musician has ever recordedtenderness and violence, S*x and rebirth, Plato and Julie Delpy. What mattered most was the feel of each the groove, the distance between the kick and the snare. If it didn't feel right, we'd do another take, or switch from piano to guitar, or change the drum sound, Vollebekk says. 10 different tracks for 10 states of motion, each with it's own pulse. There's the heat of the night and the cool blue of morning, hints of Prince and Bill Withers. Only when everything was finally overwhen the mixes were perfect, and the masters cued updid Vollebekk really understand what he had made. Now I knew what was going to happen, he remembers. The moments didn't feel fleetingthey felt eternal, almost fated. The songs spoke to me differently, but they hadn't changed. I just heard them in New Ways.

Steven Halpern - Relax Into Sleep Vol 1 432hz [COMPACT DISCS] date 05/09/2025

Canadian singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Leif Vollebekk is a philosophy student turned troubadour who marries Carl Jung's I Ching musings and Wittgenstein's love of language with his own lyrical poetry on the aptly named Revelation, a product of the introspection brought on by the lockdown. The 11 tracks, including a pair of orchestrated, cinematic set pieces, evoke the narrative skills of fellow countrymen Leonard Cohen and Gordon Lightfoot, the crystalline sound of The Eagles, anchored by the rich intimacy of Nick Drake. The completed work, organic, earthy and homemade, weaves themes of nature - water, astral constellations, mortality - into a meditation on living in an ever-changing present laced with existential doubt, the search for a higher power.