This album represents a collection of remarkable compositions.

Personally selected by internationally renowned world music artist Ruben van Rompaey, it also serves as a perfect introduction guide to the music of Eastern Expressions. With masterfully detailed, organic percussion grooves forming the music's backbone, the album captures original compositions which were created during different time periods showing spiritual influences from tribes and cultures around the globe.

Evolving from the musical worlds of Middle Eastern, Belly Dance oriented atmospheres into the progressive, modern tribal sounds on Mirage, the music of Eastern Expressions takes the listener into various moods, surprising pallets of sounds and different textures.

Furthermore, the music itself is a musical path into the heart and the mind.

The album features some remarkable collaborations with outstanding top world music artists which have resulted in an amazing fusion of Far Eastern atmospheres, tribal psychedelics, authentic exoticism, modern Jazz and very danceable beats.

Smoothly blending musical worlds of acoustic and electronic instrumentation with immeasurable passion, this album is a must-have for belly dance enthusiasts and lovers of progressive world music in general!

Original album cover art painting by Rachel van Rompaey.

Earth's darkest hour inspires it's greatest achievement - but will it be enough?

Aphelion is an EP of 4 tracks - each inspired by a part of story set not too far in Earth's future. This is the first in a series of EP releases which will further this dark chapter in humanity's future.

1. Root Cause - Earth and its citizens find themselves at the end of the end game. Quickly declining fresh water supplies necessitated the development of nano-tech that could be used with plant root systems to aggressively seek out and better manage existing groundwater. Food supplies are in desperately short supply and plant-based food supplies are under serious threat. Countries suspend AI regulations and oversight in the hopes that this tech can help extend and improve the planet's ability to produce food.

At first it appears to be wildly successful.
Then it all goes horribly wrong?

2. The Lottery - Deepest fears realized - the AI has gone offline - and whether or not sentience is at play - the net result is that the super-enhanced root systems of hybridized plants around the world have all but locked down groundwater supplies. Surface plants have died off. Root system development below ground is happening at an astounding rate - far beyond comprehension. Inside of a year it is clear there will be no further plant based foods possible. Riots have broken out across the planet as water supplies disappear, believed to be consumed at impossible rates by the super-root-nano-Ai systems.

Essentially - this is the end-game. We tinkered, we lost. Escape from the planet is humanity's only hope. An international consortium of scientists, government representatives and industry leaders is hastily formed to plan humanity's one possible escape - a journey into space.

Soon after - The Lottery takes place. Who of the 16 billion persons will go? Those who do not face certain death. Those who do - unknown. Families, communities, cities and countries - torn apart by a choice that only 50,000 Travellers must make.

3. Build - The construction project to end them all - every country on Earth represented in the fullest and most comprehensive display of cooperation in history. Resources are delivered and used without money changing hands. Tasked with creating a spaceship that can be self-sufficient indefinitely, where dozens or hundreds of generations of humanity can survive while the search for habitable planets continues is without doubt the single biggest technological project ever undertaken. Without any need for money to change hands, without borders in the way - the speed of this development is staggering. Time is running out - parts of the planet are dying off - riots have turned many urban areas around the world into absolute chaos as people without drinking water and food become animalistic in their quest for survival on a dying planet. The 50,000 who are to fly are kept in a heavily fortified town for the duration of the construction and commensurate training that must be completed to ensure the safe operation of this immense spaceship. Crew selection is ongoing via personality profiling and practical skills demonstration - physical training is ongoing for all other lottery winners - and slowly the weak are being weeded out and replaced with other strong humans.

4. Interstellar - It's a bittersweet day when APHELION departs Earth orbit, leaving behind billions of people who will not survive the coming year. There will be no coming back. Bittersweet for the 50,000 on board this craft will never see the surface of another planet. They won't even get far enough to encounter possible other planets. Potential solar systems are generations away at best - and it could be hundreds of years before anything remotely potential shows up. It could be thousands.

APHELION is all we've got. This is her story.

Rob Cosh - modular, synthesizer, production, mixing
Scott Pinkerton - piano, synthesizer, arrangement

Bach and His Teachers is an engaging collection of solo harpsichord works by JS Bach, Dietrich Buxtehude, Johann Adam Reincken, and Georg Böhm.

From Bach's well-loved Italian Concerto and Toccata in D to lesser known works by the generation of musicians who came before, this album shows the influences on one of history's greatest composers. Performed with Baroque performance practices and unequal temperament on a copy of an instrument of one of JS Bach's favorite builders (Mietke), this music lives and breathes as if it were composed today. Get a glimpse of Bach and of his musical experiences growing up.

My music is to tell stories and the language in music is the center of my work. Occasionally dissonance or rapid changes within the formal structure make the melodies appear sometimes gloomy and at other times gentle.

Structures bring developments in motion and create melodies. These relationships are constantly rediscovering and therefore always creating new stories.

"Estrem plays Lawson" presents music written by Jeremiah Lawson (b. 1974), a Seattle-based guitarist/composer. The unifying thread for all the works is experimentation with ways to synthesize the vocabulary of American popular and folk styles into the forms and developmental concepts of the Baroque and Classic era.

The five "Zombie-Sonata Rags" have Lawson using his favorite themes from early 19th century European guitar sonatas, and imagining these sonatas emerged from some swamp in America a century later as ragtime duets, zombies of what they were in a bygone era. Koholeth Rag, an earlier original by Lawson, is unusual for being written in a minor key and using imitative procedures more typical of a Baroque fugue.

The "Sonata for guitar and ukulele" is a new work that may be appreciated by lovers of the diminutive, often under-rated instrument. The lively first and third movements, while technically challenging for the ukulele, make good use of the instrument's ability to produce spicy chords and note-clusters. The classical form of the sonata has a tendency to hide just how many blues and jazz riffs and chords are serving as the foundation. The contrasting middle movement "Jury Duty" slowly reveals an appropriately pensive fugue.

The Prelude and Fugue in F minor represents a fraction of a cycle of 24 Preludes and Fugues for both solo guitar and guitar duet.

The "Guitar Sonata #2 in C major" opens with a sonata Allegro whose first theme is literally a 12-bar blues. The Maestoso offers a slower, lovely-sounding lullaby. The "Guitar Sonata in G major", performed on 8-string classical guitar, uses open G tuning. The first movement "Hobo Spider Blues" opens with a slide blues variation-form inspired by Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, while the second movement "Ragged and Sor(e)" changes to a solo rag influenced by music of Fernando Sor. The third movement "Ricardo de Yakima" returns to the slide guitar with a laid-back country blues feel.

Cozmikbeats is the embodiment of a culmination of music derived from funk, jazz, Soul, and RnB. This music was created with the mindset of taking the listener on a spiritual journey that is based on their own life experiences but set to a funky soundtrack. The music has a smooth urban feel, but with organic ethereal synth tones and orchestral elements to take you to another plane. The album has a contemporary hip hop feel, but still mature with the necessary tension and release to grab any audience and command their attention. Sit back, listen, and prepare for on a funky soul ride.

Acoustics from all angles. Fun, Action, a bit of Drama, Barroom balling, and some lovely views.

Dog bowl guitars, Banjos, ukuleles, 12 strings 6 strings. 1 rusty string! Kazoo orchestrations, Male whistling ensembles, Harmonicas and a bit of yodelling! Beard stroking grooves for everyday enlightenment. Dig in folks!