Originally written around 1997, in the early stages of my attempts at composition, Ovriah was a large piece of music that never made it past the 4-track demo tape stage. Due to the lack of equipment needed to capture the symphonic sound I was aiming for, I instead opted to distill the main theme into a solo acoustic guitar piece, the result appearing as Ovriah II on Passing Within Realtime the following year. In 2007, I realised that I now had the required technology to do justice to the complete work, Ovriah I, and began the recording of this short album devoted entirely to it. This is essentially an extended character study, loosely based on the events of an unfinished book I was working on back during the same period ten years ago. Interestingly, the atmospheres and themes I revisited had not exactly lain dormant all that time—in broad terms they seem very much to have remained at the heart of my form of expression, and have inspired most of my music to date in one form or another: heightened awareness, grief, time. So in more ways than one, this project was like a return to the source. Combining the spirit of the original writing with the execution of more recent albums, and gathering up new ideas to embellish the picture along the way, Ovriah was a liberating and exuberant experience to record.For owners of the album, further information on the thoughts behind the music is available here.
Read the Prog Archives interview here.
| 1. | Ovriah | (37,17) | |
| i) | Long After The End... | ||
| ii) | Towards Recollection | ||
| iii) | Ovriah's Distance | ||
| iv) | Triumvirate | ||
| v) | Echoes Of Ages | ||
| vi) | Tabula Rasa | ||
| vii) | Who Sleeps In Throne Eternal | ||
Album artwork by Alastair McLauchlan.