Search "friendship+decadence" 2 Items

A Ballet Through The Mud is presented in a pink and purple mixed color pressing housed in a gatefold jacket featuring photos of a ballet performance with the Colorado Symphony and a 12 page graphic insert outlining the narrative of the ballet A Ballet Through Mud is a poignant coming-of-age story that delves into the complexities of love, the loss of innocence, the bonds of friendship, and personal growth. Drawing inspiration from RZA's own lyrics and the candid memories he penned in his teenage notebooks, the narrative also embodies his profound philosophical journey influenced by Chan Buddhism. As RZA eloquently states, “out of the mud grows the lotus.”

All These Years is Phil Cook's first fully instrumental piano release. A prolific songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, solo artist, and in-demand musician whose collaborations have run the gamut of genre - as a founding member of beloved band Megafaun to work with The Blind Boys of Alabama, Bon Iver, Kanye West, and Hiss Golden Messenger, to name a few - here, Cook returns to his primary instrument, the piano, back where it all began.All These Years was recorded at NorthStar Church of the Arts in Durham, NC by his cousin and collaborator Brian Joseph (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, Indigo Girls), on a long-cared-for and much-loved one-hundred year-old Steinway piano. All These Years is near hymn-like, a collection of prayers or meditations, improvisations threaded together by feeling, by the things that matter most. When Cook began these songs, he was in the headspace of meditating on the people in his support network, and those closest to him. Through composing the music, he began to reflect on specific and important presences in his life, and ends up capturing their essence via keys here. He distills decades of friendship, brotherhood, family, love, learning, and loss into flickering piano portraits - impressionistic and fluid and reverent. It's not so much looking backwards as it is just looking around, reflections on all that is human and divine and present, and the roads we've taken to get us there.