Tune in on Monday, August 24th at 1pm when Ears of Maize airs his recent talk with Netherlands-based artists Tomo Katsurada (Ex-Kikagaku Moyo / Future Days Radio) and Jonny Nash (Melody As Truth) about their recent collaboration album, At The Emerald Pool.
At The Emerald Pool, a collection of ten pieces that offer the listener a full immersion into the pair’s sound. With guitar as the primary instrument for both artists, it is no surprise that the core of the album lies here, specifically in the fluid interplay between the two players. Layers of gentle, delay-soaked fingerpicking often make it almost impossible to distinguish where one player ends and the other begins.
As soloists, both Katsurada and Nash have a gift for crafting melodic lines that feel open and ascending, expressive and hopeful without becoming saccharine. Longer, more abstract pieces are counterbalanced by a series of shorter songs, with five vocal tracks appearing across the album. The decision to share vocal duties lends the record a unique quality and a strong sense of variation, bringing a wide expressive range out of a deliberately focused musical framework.
At The Emerald Pool represents the first chapter in an ongoing musical dialogue, an attempt to capture a moment of connection, openness and discovery, laying the foundation for what continues to unfold.
