After a few years of musical hiatus, this summer I’ve been producing some music of my own. All the way through the summer I had this feeling in my guts that I needed to pull out so bad. I needed to capture and freeze the feeling of the everlasting summer evenings. Winters in Pacific North West are really dark and cloudy and I feel like needing a balloon of oxigene for the gloomy days.
All my life I’ve been in love with this summer feeling that connects me with the days from my childhood when my friends and I we used to play under the sun in the swimming pool, all day long.
In 1997, I started working on a series of ambient electronic pieces that were supposed to conform an instrumental album called “Analog Woods, Digital Moods”. The concept was to create a collection of sound landscapes, little reconstructions of some of my favorite momentum in vintage music from the 70’s. The project has been frozen for many years, and now it seems to come back wit this new work, “Days of Summer So Long“.
Original inner sleeve design of Tales from Topograhic Oceans”, designed by Roger Dean.
For this particular track, I’ve been inspired by a small instrumental passage from the song “The Remembering” from Yes legendary album “Tales from Topograhic Oceans” (1974). As a teenager, I was in love with this album. I loved to get lost in the woods in Spain and play it on my Sony Walkman. In a way, it’s lyrics and music changed my life.
During the time I lived in London in the late 90’s, I used to live in Willesden Green, the neighborhood in North London where Morgan studios were located. That’s precisely where Yes album “Tales from Topograhic Oceans” was recorded. I remember hanging around and fantasizing about it.
Old location of Morgan Studios, Willesden Green, London, 1997
For this song, I have tried to recreate the sound of Rick Wakeman’s synthesizers and Mellotron from that 70’s period, using VST instruments and my Mininova. I wanted to capture the atmosphere and feeling of the song to create a new landscape of the sunny everlasting summer days. Of course, all with my humble respect and love for the original music.
This summer, shortly after I completed this track, Naomi and I spent one Sunday morning at the Seattle Center. It was a glorious sunny summer day and we spent a couple of hours mesmerized watching the kids playing with the water and music of The International Fountain, which was designed by sculptors Kazuyuki Matsushita and Hideki Shimizu for Seattle’s 1962 Century 21 Exposition. I felt like experiencing again the same feeling of happiness, summer sun and water that I tried to capture in this song. The same feeling that has always been with me from Jon Anderson’s lyrics:
“In the days of summer so long
We danced as evening sang their song
We wander out the day so long”
