Artist description These are songs from the sea. They're also night songs: dark, sultry, dreamlike, and burning with a ghostly light...a full moon hanging over the sea. I'm Aaron English. All the Waters of This World is my first album. It features eleven songs performed and produced by myself (on vocals, piano, electronics and various ethnic instruments) and a four-piece supporting band, with guest appearances by thirteen other musicians from seven different countries. I live and work in Seattle, and I was born and raised in a fishing village here on the Puget Sound. But the musical traditions I've drawn from, the stories the songs tell, and the musicians and instruments that appear on the album hail from the shores of every continent except Antarctica. The scope of the project - and the sound of the album itself - is epic, variously featuring full string orchestrations, Middle Eastern and West African drum ensembles, or hurdy-gurdy or didjeridu layered with electronics. But the subject matter is intimate: our universal struggle to hold on to a sense of ourselves – and to each other - in a world that is growing smaller, less familiar, and more complicated with each passing day.

Music Style World Fusion

Musical Influences Tears for Fears, Steve Earle, Pet Shop Boys, Ayub Ogada, Daniel Lanois, Paul Simon

Similar Artists Sarah MacLachlan, Dead Can Dance, Peter Gabriel, Sting

Artist History I was born and raised in Gig Harbor, Washington. At 17, I left home and travelled extensively in a dozen different countries, served as a curator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, worked as a technician with the American Symphony Orchestra, and honed my song-craft and production skills at Bard College, a liberal arts school in upstate New York perhaps best known as the alma mater of Steely Dan and the Beastie Boys. At Bard College I met Don Gunn, Miguel Mateus and Meredith Yayanos, who would later join me here in Seattle as part of the core band and production team for All the Waters of This World. I returned to the Seattle area five years later, in 1997, and established the connections within the city's storied musical community that helped bring this uniquely difficult project to life. In January of 2001 my close friend Patrick Strole came on board as co-producer of the album and we built, under his direction, our recording studio inside an old barn in South Seattle, featuring 2,000 pounds of straw bales as soundproofing insulation and a floating floor to capture bass frequencies. Recording began in April, 2001, and took a year to complete. Owning our own studio gave us the luxury of being able to experiment with song arrangements. The core band sent two months recording the tracks which formed the foundation for each song: Drums, guitar, violin, bass, and my piano and lead vocals. I then spent six months on my own with the album, "fleshing out" the songs, a task which included scoring string parts, recording guest musicians (such as the mariachi ensemble on "Santiago"), and programming samples and electronics. Several of the songs at one point had over one hundred simultaneous tracks. Eighteen musicians and over fifty different instruments appear on the album, drawing from the musical traditions of Ghana, Venezuela, France, Fiji, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Australia, Spain, and the Middle East as well as the United States. The production team and core band for the album was comprised of myself and four brilliantly talented musicians, close friends of mine based in Seattle and New York City: Violinist/vocalist Meredith Yayanos and bassist Miguel Mateus flew into Seattle from New York City for several weeks of song arrangement, rehearsal and recording. Miguel contributed additional bass tracks from his studio in New York as the songs developed throughout the year. Basic tracks for the album were recorded under the direction of myself and co-producer/multi-instrumentalist Patrick Strole. Co-producer/drummer Don Gunn and I spent the last four months of the project completing recording and tackling the massive task of post-production and mixing the album.

Group Members pianist/vocalist/programmer Aaron English, guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Patrick Strole, violinist/vocalist Meredith Yayanos, bassist Miguel Mateus, drummer/programmer Don Gunn

Instruments Piano, flamenco, acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drum kit, percussion, synthesizers, samples

Albums All the Waters of This World

Press Reviews "Aaron English has created an album that defies genres...All the Waters of This World goes beyond snapshots and simple hooks. This CD combines digital magic with dozens of world beat drummers, singers, synthesizers, and other sounds (can you say hurdy-gurdy?) to create a stunning portrait of complex, global beauty and awe-inspired, raw emotion...the world rhythms sizzle alongside English's compelling keyboard work." - www.indiemusicreview.com, September 2002 "From out of nowhere comes a CD that blows me away...draws from rock & world, progressive & folk...similar to Peter Gabriel’s first forays into ethnic realms...the production shimmers...a brilliant album." - Chaos Realm, September 2002

Location Seattle, WA - USA

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