Quicksilver Night 2023-2024

It’s human nature, I suppose, to reflect on the year gone by as one looks ahead to the coming year. I am not immune from that urge itself but I view this both as something of a useful mnemonic device to help me organize my thoughts and, if nothing else, putting it in writing makes me makes me more accountable to myself than I might be otherwise.

So here we go. 🙂

Even though we managed the release of the “Quintus Interruptus” instrumental single in July, the vast majority of my music-related efforts early in the year were related to the September release of the long-awaited “Ptichka” EP and then, later, the December release of the “Whispers in the Snow” Christmas-themed single. The “Ptichka” EP has amassed almost 62K cumulative streams on Spotify by year’s end (in three months) and this doesn’t even count the nearly 30K additional streams that “Latibulate (Video Edit)” garnered separately (entirely in December). “Whispers in the Snow” also amassed over 45K Spotify streams in December by itself, which is very cool but it has already dropped down to nearly zero daily streams, unsurprisingly, and will likely remain there until next Christmas; I suppose that’s the nature of holiday-themed music. Quicksilver Night peaked with 21.8K monthly Spotify listeners on December 24th and 25th; I’ve always had more of a presence on Spotify than any other platform and I know it doesn’t mean a whole lot by itself but I’m nonetheless quite happy with that.

We released “Whispers in the Snow” on December 4th and “Latibulate (Video Edit)” on December 11th. This was taken on 12/25, Christmas Day. >>

The “Ptichka” EP in particular received a lot of positive reviews and, if you like, you can check out excerpts of those at the “Ptichka” discography page at https://quicksilvernight.com/ptichka. I really need to thank the team at C Squared Music (https://csquared.info/) for their outstanding promotional efforts.

I am thrilled to note a couple of year-end accolades here:

<< Not only am I humbly grateful to note the inclusion of the “Ptichka” EP by Quicksilver Night featuring Dikajee on Progrock dot com’s “2023 Best Progressive EP’s with Rich and Chuck” but also the song “Latibulate” in particular (track five of the EP) was listed as one of the “2023 Best Progressive Rock Songs with Richard and Chuck”!

My sincere thanks to Richard Reyes and Chuck Simons.

<< Similarly, I can scarcely believe that the “Ptichka” EP was counted as among both the “Best Progressive Rock Albums of 2023!” AND “The Absolute Best 25 Albums of 2023! (All Categories)” by Professor Mark of Progressive Rock Central.

Thank you, Mark Preising!

Now, moving ahead in 2024…

The musical ship looming largest on the Quicksilver Night’s production horizon right now is the “Seven Cities Blue” instrumental EP featuring saxophonist Jeff Saunders on all four songs along with other guest musicians. We are resuming recording in January with guitarist Jason Cale at the producer’s helm and providing his guitar prowess to two of the songs and we are very much on track for an April release. I describe the EP as “hybrid jazz/blues/rock in the vein of 2020’s ‘No Contest’” and if you liked that then I’m confident you’ll love “Seven Cities Blue”.

Also ahead in 2024, you can expect no less than four fully licensed cover songs by Quicksilver Night featuring Dikajee on vocals. We plan to release them one at a time on all major digital retailers concurrently with Dikajee’s Patreon activities. These four songs include “Words” as performed by Missing Persons and “Voices Carry” as performed by ‘Til Tuesday, songs that Dikajee and I originally planned to release concurrently with the “Ptichka” EP but decided against it at the time. We’re going to go ahead with them now this year. I’ve also completed arrangements for the hypnotically evocative “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak and emotionally wrenching “Ordinary World” by Duran Duran. The original versions of all four of these songs have lyrical depths that might be obscured by slick production and glossed over by time and familiarity with them but they are great songs and we’re going to have fun doing them. I’ve stuck quite close to the original musical arrangements – although tiny bits of unintended progginess have doubtlessly snuck in – and Dikajee will be handling the vocal arrangements herself. Dikajee and I also intend to complete production of the Christmas-themed “Dragon’s Eye View” in time for the 2024 holidays; we almost released it this past season but as production continued I began to feel as though it was feeling a little rushed and cobbled together for my tastes so I decided to defer its release until 2024; it’s probably just as well so that we weren’t competing with ourselves by releasing it concurrently with “Whispers in the Snow”.

Lastly, but by no means least, I am resuming production of Quicksilver Night’s next full-length album “We Are Also the Dreamt” this summer; an ambitious project, I expect to make some serious headway this year but I imagine it won’t see release until mid-2025. I’ve written all the music for the album – too much music, actually – and we’ve begun the production process. You can expect the usual array of special guest performers and musical collaborators and there will be some new faces in that crowd along with some familiar ones.

Let’s see how things develop.

Quicksilver Night 2022-2023

Looking Back

On March 16th I posted “I hit 2.3K monthly listeners on Pandora a few days ago and now it’s begun to subside a bit. I’m fairly certain this will be the peak for the year; I’d love to be wrong about that.” I was right, however, and it was indeed the high point in our Pandora listeners for the year, no doubt due to three different tracks from the “Asymptote” album serving consecutively as “featured tracks” on Pandora, but I’m just fine with that. I hope to surpass that with this 2023’s forthcoming releases. 🙂

On April 12th we hit 10.7K monthly listeners on Spotify and that was our peak for the year as well and, in fact, the all-time high for Quicksilver Night … so far. 🙂
We released the digital-only single “Existential” and its lyric video on August 30, basically to provide some new and exciting music in 2022 and hopefully maintain an online presence while we continued to diligently work on produce yet more new songs for forthcoming albums.
 
Here, above, is the official lyric video for Quicksilver Night’s “Existential” featuring the blazing vocals of Hadi Kiani and some searing guitar solo work from Farzad Golpayegani. Hard-hitting rock music in a classic vein enhanced by some progressive elements reminiscent of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, “Existential” passionately articulates the dread we all sometimes feel against an ominously throbbing tribal backdrop. #rotorvideos #fazadg #hadikiani
 
“Existential” is available for streaming and download at digital retailers everywhere via https://quicksilvernight.com/existential/

Some Year End Validations

I was happy just to be nominated for a Friday Night Progressive “Inde Prog Award” but am immensely gratified to learn that Quicksilver Night was awarded third place in the instrumental category. This is no mean feat, especially in consideration of the ridiculously high quality of the other entrants across the board.

Here’s one of two screen shots from my 2022 “Spotify Wrapped” that I’ve chosen to share here.

…And here’s the other. 🙂

Looking Ahead

Quicksilver Night has a LOT of new music in the production queue for 2023.
#quicksilvernight #QNP #sandcastlerecords

“Ptichka”: Almost exactly a year ago, on December 13th, 2021, I announced a collaborative project with the enchanting Olja Karpova (“Dikajee”) on “Ptichka”, a song nearly eight minutes in length that, although perhaps it could be labeled as “progressive” in the broadest sense of things, touched upon several genres. Then I was doubly pleased be able to announce several days later that Andrew Negustorov (“The Andrew N. Project”) had agreed to provide his signature fingerboard-burning fretwork to the piece as well. Then on February 24th Russia invaded Ukraine; this aggression and ensuing sanctions by seemingly the entire rest of the world threw several spanners into the “Ptichka” works but we eventually got things back on track. The song “Ptichka” was originally slated for release as a digital-only single destined be later included as a bonus track on the forthcoming “We Are Also the Dreamt” album but the project has evolved. The song “Ptichka” is now slated to be the title song of a five-song EP of the same name that will span almost 30 minutes and be made available on physical CD. Please allow me to share here a couple of video clips that I imagine will spark your interest far more than any narrative I could supply, below.

#dikajee #marcoiacobini

“Seven Cities Blue”: There are a lot of moving parts to any collaborative project and it took us most of 2022 to finally get the “Seven Cities Blue” train properly set on the tracks. As 2022 comes to a close I am pleased to say that we’ve made very significant inroads into recording the four-song “Seven Cities Blue” mini-EP. About a year ago I announced that I was “set to include four tracks of hybrid jazz/blues/rock in the vein of 2020’s ‘No Contest’ and I have the usual collaborative suspects – along with a surprise guest or two – in mind for it.” Nothing’s changed except the timing of the thing. I can unequivocally state that all four songs of the mini-EP will feature Jeff Saunders on saxes and that my good friend Jason Cale has agreed to reprise his role as co-producer of all four songs as well as serving as featured guitarist on two of them. I am delighted also to share again that local guitar legend Jay Rakes has agreed to apply his fretboard skills to the title track. We’ve already begun the recording process for the songs “Seven Cities Blue”, “Shorten Suite”, and “Edifice Wrecks” and plan to hit the ground running in January with “What You Think”. Our immediate goal is to lay down and pre-mix all the guitar parts into the bass and drums guide tracks before we set to recording Jeff’s saxophone parts. Then we’ll go about coordinating with a couple of additional guest musicians. #jasoncalemusic

Featuring my friend Stephen Speelman as “The Unified One”, let’s not forget the digital-only single “Quintus Interruptus”. We finished our demo version of the song and dumped audio of the project into Steve’s lap right as things were ramping up for the holidays and it’s not a surprise that it’s had to take a back seat to some other ongoing things, especially when one considers that the song has some unusual qualities that don’t allow for a cookie-cutter approach to songcraft  A guitar-driven odd-meter rock instrumental, “Quintus Interruptus” would have been right at home on 2021’s “Asymptote” album; beginning as a joke, the working title “Quintus Interruptus” stemmed from a recurring bar of 4/4 that interrupted the 5/4 groove. We just sort of collectively shrugged and decided to go with it. You shouldn’t rush creativity even if you could and I am looking forward to the day it all clicks together.

I am being intentionally coy about this but I have written two additional songs that will see release in late 2023 and I’ve got two stellar vocal talents – and excellent songwriters in their own right – on board to collaborate with me on each of them. We will officially announce this two-song project in April or May and there are a few of you that might be surprised by it when we do but it’s very unlikely that any of you will be displeased by the content of that announcement. For those of you doing the math, that’s 12 Quicksilver Night songs across four releases in the production queue for 2023 so far. Here’s hoping. 🙂

Quicksilver Night 2021

Looking Back on the Previous Year and Ahead to the Next

We released five new songs as Quicksilver Night in the first part of the year, two as standalone advance singles and three as a digital-only mini-EP, and this was meant to keep things moving until we could release the full-length “Asymptote” album later in the year. Those songs were Hephaestus the Cuckold (in March) and The Galactic Edge (in August) – both featuring Farzad Golpayegani – and all three songs of April’s “Mr. Wizard” mini-EP featuring Jason Cale: Mr. Wizard; Power Curve and Parallel Play. All five of those songs were originally intended for “Asymptote” and all of them wound up on that album, either re-released or as bonus tracks, so I qualify that particular part of my plan a success.

Those songs are responsible for Quicksilver Night surpassing 5K followers and, at one point, nearly 8K monthly listeners at Spotify as well as gaining some significant traction on Pandora Radio. It was my hope and intention to have “primed the pump” for December’s release of the “Asymptote” album

We finally released the “Asymptote” album – the day before yesterday as of this post, actually – and it’s been a long time coming. “Asymptote” seems to have been well received so far and initial reactions have been greatly encouraging. It’s a little early to tell how it all might play out and the year is very nearly over but I suppose this is what I get for releasing new music in December. 🙂

As it says on the “Asymptote” discography page: “I laid down the bones of the album long ago and but it’s fair to say that we began actively recording tracks for ‘Asymptote’ right on the heels of 2018’s ‘Symmetry’ album. It’s been a long time coming however one might look at it; this figurative machine had a lot of moving parts to begin with and things were further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, notably for associated travel restrictions and for the detrimental impact on warehousing and physical distribution of CDs. It’s here now though, in all its glory!”

So, now let’s look ahead … I already posted about my plans for upcoming releases in 2022 and 2023 last May in a separate blog entry and those plans haven’t changed much but I’ve refined them a bit and here’s how things look for Quicksilver Night in the coming year:

We will begin laying down audio tracks early in the year for a vocals-oriented full-length “We Are Also the Dreamt” album that we hope to release in 2023. I have previously posted something of my plans for this album back in May but it should come as no surprise that the project has evolved since then (and will probably continue to do so). I’ve made some conceptual changes to “We Are Also the Dreamt” since I last posted and the primary shift has been to remove a couple of songs – including both instrumentals – from the programming of that album. In its current form “We Are Also the Dreamt” will be comprised of ten vocally driven new songs spanning nearly an hour – including the 10-minute “Somnium Liminalis” – plus two bonus tracks totaling about 12 additional minutes between them.

Listen to Dikajee at https://dikajee.bandcamp.com

I also have plans of recording and releasing a digital-only mini-EP in 2022, “Seven Cities Blue” is set to include four tracks of hybrid jazz/blues/rock in the vein of 2020’s “No Contest” and I have the usual collaborative suspects – along with a surprise guest or two – in mind for it. I’ve also arranged and licensed cover versions of Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry” and Missing Persons’ “Words” – we’ve already begun recording both – and I am not entirely sure how we’re going to proceed with them but I guarantee that they’re coming in 2022 as well. As fun as they might be I view this mini-EP and the two cover songs I just mentioned as something of placeholders, not because they’re getting anything less than my full attention but because the “We Are Also the Dreamt” album, my primary goal, is dauntingly ambitious. There was a gap of nearly three years between Quicksilver Night’s “Symmetry” and “Asymptote” full-length albums and I am glad we dropped a few digital-only tracks in between those two albums to fill the void. I hope to repeat and refine the process this time around and provide more new music before “We Are Also the Dreamt” sees the proverbial light of day.

Stay tuned!

“We Are Also the Dreamt”

… a closer look at this upcoming album

The next paragraph is background information; skip to the one that follows if you like.

It’s a known fact that I constantly write music as Quicksilver Night. Some time ago I decided to release much of my instrumental music in one fell swoop (the forthcoming “Asymptote” album) and intended to later follow that with an album of my vocally driven material (“We Are Also the Dreamt”). Then we found ourselves having to adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic and its fallout, notably including its detrimental impact on warehousing and physical distribution of CDs. As a result of this I opted shuffle things around and ended up releasing two separate three-song mini-EPs in digital-only formats: “No Contest” on November 27, 2020 and “Mr. Wizard” on April 20, 2021. We also released the song “Hephaestus the Cuckold” as an advance single from “Asymptote” on March 5th. We have been busy. We are finished with the tracking phase of the “Asymptote” album and will finish mixing it this summer for release early this fall. We will release another advance single from the album (“The Galactic Edge”) prior to that and we’ll also include the three songs of the “Mr. Wizard” mini-EP as bonus tracks. Watch for it!

But this isn’t about “Asymptote”; this is about “We Are Also the Dreamt.” As I publicly posted earlier today, “The music is already written and the guide tracks recorded. I need to dig deeper into the album programming and make some decisions about editing and song order.” I’ve been listening to those guide tracks and making some notes. I’ll share them here for anyone interested but I have to admit that I write these thoughts down primarily because it helps me to keep my thoughts organized:

These are definitely going to be on the album, not necessarily in this particular order except for the opener:

1) “Canon/We Are Also the Dreamt” (4:49) – the title track and obviously the opener, it begins with a melodic four-part interwoven vocal canon before bursting into a driving prog rock song with tribal-sounding toms. It’s rhythmically interesting in that it has a recurring bar of 3/4 mixed into the otherwise 4/4 phrasing but I think it feels organic to the song rather than contrived. After we’ve completed the final mixing of “Canon/We Are Also the Dreamt” we’ll need to go back bounce a version of it without the vocal canon intro and release it as a separate single for the streaming-only crowd with their generally shortened attention spans. The song would then be more likely to garner a broader audience than those that might be initially put off by a small choir of monastic-sounding voices. Hopefully some of them would then turn to the album to see what other goodies it might hold. 🙂 In response to “We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams” comes “We all stumble, often blind to the truth that we’re caught in a web; we’ve all forgotten in the minds of our gods we are also the dreamt.”

2) “Camera Obscura” (6:03) – will most likely be the second track on the album. It’s my usual brand of distilled prog but with some classical nuances. The focus here is on the vocals throughout; there’s not much in the manner of guitar heroics as such but there’s some nice harmony and interplay between the guitar and the piano balanced against some straightforward rock sections. The lyrics speak to the often-illusory nature of human contact via the Internet. “Bathed in pallid light … flicker through the night … window to the soul … through a billion eyes … Do they see?”

I will program the songs below into some sort of logical order to follow the songs above as the ‘We Are Also the Dreamt” project progresses.

3) “Desiccant Grains” (5:11) – is an attempt to describe my experiences as a US Soldier in Iraq in 1991 and again in 2003 in general terms that almost any service member could understand and hopefully relate to. It’s difficult to describe the edginess of long-term tedium in a pervasive environment of anxiety; I guess time will tell how well I did in doing so. The song itself is, unsurprisingly, my usual brand of distilled prog but with some different flavors and textures. “Sunrise on an ocean of sand … dust, flies, and a gun in my hands…”

4) “Monochrome Memories” (3:41) – is more or less straightforward rock in general terms but interestingly syncopated as the two intertwined but individually dynamic basslines lend it a subtle complexity against its broad, almost lush, chord voicings. The song is about a traitorous lover long gone suddenly returned and seeking absolution. The song was composed with a melodically soaring guitar solo section in mind and I have several different hugely talented friends that would fit the bill nicely. “Lies, as they burn, ringing in my ears now return, stinging all those years…”

5) “Revenant” (3:42) – has an almost Celtic feel to it due to the compound meter but it’s very much rock. It lyrically speaks to the feelings of anomie and dissociation that sneak up on all of us sometimes. If you ever had one of those dreams in which you were falling and awoke before you hit the ground then but then spent the day uneasily waiting for the other shoe to drop, metaphorically speaking, then you’ll know exactly what I mean by the line “abide today braced for an impact.”

6) “Somnium Liminalis” (9:58) – is, in its current form, both the longest song I have written to date and probably the one that is closest to being purely progressive rock in the classic sense of the genre label. I meant for it to be Latin for “the threshold of sleep” but I was also playing with the idea of a god of sleep being at the door. It’s an instrumental-only so far but various vocal lines keep popping up in my head for it and certain sections of it might benefit from an inventive soloist so I’ll leave those possibilities open.

7) “Panorama-Eigenlicht” (3:48) – is an interesting creation, an instrumental song mostly in quintuple meter that is somehow melodic without there being a specific melody that I could point to. To my ear it sounds somehow simultaneously both alien and familiar. The title literally means something like “All-Around Self-Light” in German but since I mean eigenlicht as the uniform dark gray background that many people report seeing in the absence of light it’s very much open to interpretation. I might incorporate some flute into the piece later in the production process.

8) “Xenolith” (5:33) – is also an instrumental song in mixed meter with some very cool things going on. It is stylistically reminiscent of several of my works – including, notably “Camera Obscura” above – but also very much different than the others. I’m currently of the mind that we should record it as-is and then, once the final product is in the analog domain, slow down the playback so that it sounds a full step lower to give it that “Strawberry Fields Forever” vibe.

9) “Untitled 2020#15” (4:06) – is a hypnotic piece with four clearly melodic lines in gorgeous harmony and counterpoint for which I’ve yet to come up with a single meaningful lyric couplet. I expect that when the words finally come so also will a suitable title but for now I only hear the notes as nonsense syllables. I tell myself to be patient but, frankly, it’s driving me crazy.

10) “Solar” (5:31) – is a working title that I might just ending keeping for want of something better. Poetic imagery, almost elegiac, delivered by a five-voice choir against a distilled prog rock backdrop, it feels to me like a solid closer for the album. I might invite a guest soloist but I’m going to wait until after recording everything else before deciding if it’s desirable for me to do so. It seems an excellent candidate to close the album. Sample line: “As he rises to depart from this place silent angels bear cold witness in effigy … Watchers made of stone raise their eyes to the sun…”

The ten songs above together span about forty-seven and half minutes in their current form, a complete album. Nonetheless, I have several other completed songs from which to choose that would thematically fit into the album, notably including the two below:

11) “Headlong” (5:07) – mostly in quintuple meter, a vocals-oriented song broadly about the choices we make in the face of our apparent freewill and the consequences thereof. This song was originally meant for the “Reliquary” album but somehow slipped through the cracks. It would fit right in on “We Are Also the Dreamt.” Sample line: “Surface ripples form and fade as the skipping stone strikes then away, free from Earthbound gravity, flying high…”

12) “Litany” (4:40) – another song about choices originally meant for “Reliquary” that slipped through the cracks and would nicely fit here, “Litany” is mostly in 7/8 and very much based in Middle Eastern modes. The lyrics of “Litany” relate more to regrets and waiting. Sample line: “Unconcerned, as we waste our lives carelessly…Dream deferred, as we wait to find some other time, some other day…”

What I don’t have yet is any concrete plans for album art and I suppose I should begin searching around for suitable works to license. That probably won’t pan out because I’ve got a vague idea to incorporate some of the album’s lyrical themes in some sort of surrealistic setting and I might just as easily end up commissioning an original piece but I suppose we’ll see. I am open to suggestions in this regard.

In sum, that describes the current state of Quicksilver Night’s “We Are Also the Dreamt” full-length album. We’ve already laid the groundwork and should begin actively tracking the next steps in the process beginning late 2021 after the release of the “Asymptote” album. I’ll be sure to provide any significant updates throughout the process.

All content above, as applicable, copyright by me either as myself or as Quicksilver Night Productions, ASCAP

New Releases Early 2021!

Coming February 14, 2021!

I approached Cara Isadora in February 2020 about singing the vocally driven songs of Quicksilver Night’s forthcoming full-length “We Are Also the Dreamt” album, a heavily prog-tinged affair full of operatic and madrigal nuances. During this discussion we discovered that we both had widely diverse musical tastes and decided to record a licensed version of my straightforward rock arrangement of Katy Perry’s 2008 hit “I Kissed a Girl” just to test the waters of our musical compatibility and have some fun doing it. With a harder edge than the original and featuring the pyrotechnics of guitar slinger Milt Gore, you just might enjoy it. 🙂

“I Kissed a Girl” cover by Randall Lee
via digital manipulation of one of Cara’s original photographs, used by permission

Arrives March 5, 2021!

Quicksilver Night’s “Hephaestus the Cuckold” features the incredible guitarist Farzad Golpayegani, an immensely talented artist in multiple media who has also provided its digital artwork. Driven by opposing elements, “Hephaestus the Cuckold” is melodic yet merciless and is somehow both ambient and extreme, punctuated by the sound of ringing anvil strikes and industrial machinery yet carried forward also by delicate piano.

“Hephaestus” digital painting
by Farzad Golpayegani, copyright 2020

Watch for it!

Sometime shortly after these – I’m aiming for April 20th – will come the “Mr. Wizard” mini-EP, three songs of guitar-driven instrumental music powered by the amazing guitarist Jason Cale. Heavily laden with progressive elements, the songs of “Mr. Wizard” rock in a classic vein colored by jazz sensibilities … blue notes and modal playing abound! This is the album art, edited and licensed from an original photograph by Larry Ferdinande Photography.