Imaginary Cube album cover

Twenty Years in the Making

Imaginary Cube album cover

Today marks the 20th anniversary of my commencing profession recording music. While out to dinner with my wife Karyn to celebrate her birthday on July 10, 2004, I announced my intention to make a professional record in a professional recording studio, to both her surprise and horror. To mark that fateful occasion two decades ago, I’ve released the culmination of that project, a new Sinclair Soul record entitled Imaginary Cube. This collection features songs written or recorded during that “Imaginary Lines” era, 2004 to 2009, predating Sinclair Soul, but featuring the same core musicians. Imaginary Cube is the first of several compilations that will serve as an epilogue to the Sinclair Soul project, following the release of the final studio album Frequencies last December.

My music career can be logically divided into three phases. The first of these phases started when I was a teenager in the mid 1980s and concluded on December 13, 1996, the day I married Karyn. Up to that point I had been recording volumes of amateur tapes of mostly forgettable songs (although there was an occasional gem) and had very little experience in a professional studio. After I got married, I took a long sabbatical new approach to music. Mainly, I didn’t make much music at all. We had a place in Mountain Top, PA with an upright piano and, every once in a while, I would fiddle around and composed a handful of tunes that were purely instrumental at the time. This was my turn-of-the-century, first “dark age”, which divided the aforementioned first and second phases of my music career.

There was one song during that first dark age which was fully composed with lyrics. In early 1997, we found out that Karyn was pregnant and, during a small family vacation to Virginia Beach, I wrote about a specific day and called it “Twilight of Innocence”, a song specifically about my two present children and the third that was on its way (or so I thought, turned out they were twins). This is the oldest composition on Imaginary Cube (it is actually included as the second movement of the four-part medley “Ocean Suite”) and the only one in this collection composed prior to 2003.

In 2003, I started a job with the Commonwealth Pennsylvania and for a year I commuted to Harrisburg from our home in Drums, Pennsylvania. It was during this time that I started to write lyrics as well as compose full songs. The writing was slow at first, but by mid 2004 I had a solid group of completed songs which ultimately swayed my decision to enter a professional studio. One of these songs was a weird quasi-political tune called “Lorelei”

The music to “Lorelei” was composed during the “first dark age” (with scratch lyrics originally written as “Episode Four”, describing the first Star Wars movie), but the real lyrics were not established until June 2004, the same month my family fully migrated to the Harrisburg area. “Lorelei” is unique in this collection as the final version is a hodge-podge built upon the original 2004 demo (with no rhythm “click” track”) and contains elements recorded in 2004, 2005, 2009, 2018, 2019 and 2024 all recorded in four or five different studios.

Commencing on that fateful July day in 2004, the Imaginary Lines project continued through the rest of the decade, culminating with the release of Imaginary Lines 33 on September 9, 2009. I won’t get into too many details here about the original phase of the project, as I’ve already written extensively about that project in several articles including “My Own Personal Edsel” on this website.

However, there was one final studio session which I include as part of Imaginary Lines. In December 2009, I recorded a trio of songs for possible placement on a multi-artist benefit album that we were producing for Cygnus Wave Records. One of these three, “Song for Diane” featuring vocalist PJ Heckman, landed on the album. The other two, “The Lion” and “The Lamb” met with production issues and both remained unreleased until Imaginary Cube. After this a “second dark age” commenced, which separated the second (Imaginary Lines) and third (Sinclair Soul) phases of my songwriting career.

So let’s fast-forward to Summer 2018. By this time, we had released the initial two Sinclair Soul albums, The Journey and Reflections of Relevance, which each featured a handful of remakes of formally Imaginary Lines tunes. During that summer I began solid plans to record a huge, all-original record with plenty of guest musicians, which became The Good Guys (2019). But before that, decided to once and for all put Imaginary Lines to rest with a compilation of nine updated tracks called Nine Fine Lines. Co-produced with my son Jake, this album was released on September 9, 2018 (the 9th anniversay of Imaginary Lines 33). However, neither of us were ever really happy with the final, rushed product and eventually Nine Fine Lines became the only record that I ever “unpublished” – it is no longer available and those versions of the tunes are archived for the ages. We made plans to once again revisit this in the future, terming that project “The Imaginary Box” as a more comprehensive potential compilation.

Sinclair Soul continued for the next five years with three solid records of new, original music along with two Ric Albano solo records in between (you can check out that entire discography here. Once we decided that the 2023 album Frequencies would be the last new studio record, we started looking into unfinished projects which would act as an epilogue for Sinclair Soul. So it was, this one last pass at Imaginary Lines music.

To accomplish this, I reviewed everything – all the tracks on Imaginary Lines 33 not already re-done and the many unreleased / incomplete song ideas from the decade of the 2000s. In the process “The Imaginary Box” became Imaginary Cube once we settled on 27 tracks (that’s three cubed) for the record. Of those 27 tracks, they were roughly evenly divided into three categories – 1.) the 9 tracks from Nine Fine Lines, 2.) approximately 9 further tracks originally on Imaginary Lines 33 but not included on Nine Fine Lines, and 3.) approximately 9 previously unreleased tracks. Now, I say “approximately” here because Imaginary Cube features two medleys on previously separate tracks. “Phoenix Rising” is a combo of Imaginary Lines 33 tracks “Ashes” and “The Phoenix”, while the massive, four-part, sixteen-plus-minute “Ocean Suite” features three previously released (“The Old Man In the Sea”, “Twilight of Innocence”, “Here On the Beach”) along with the previously unreleased instrumental “The Dawning”. Other previously unreleased tracks in the collection include “Rhymes with Orange”, “I Don’t Want to Live Without It”, “Tunnel Vision”, “Only a Matter of Time”, “Life Is Strange”, “Tres Dolores Por Stig” and “Blues Generation”. Further, some of the updated versions of previously released material also got updated song titles. Check out this Imaginary Songs Matrix for a look at how each song in this collection evolved.

So with the release of Imaginary Cube I can finally now say that, after twenty years, the Imaginary Lines project is finally complete. And now the epilogue phase continues as, beyond this release, we plan on putting together an EP of covers tunes we’ve recorded as well as a new, full length record of “basement tracks” in early 2025. So stay tuned!

~ Ric Albano
 

Jesus w/ Palms

Holy Week

Jesus w/ Palms

Palm Sunday commences the week known as “holy week” in the Christian tradition. This is final week of the solemn period of Lent, but it is also as much about the very nature of humans as it is about the story of the death, resurrection and divinity of Jesus. During my lifetime, my devotion to the Catholic faith has gone from strong to passive and back again, but though all those years I’ve always had a strong affinity and curiosity about the extraordinary events of holy week.

During the week of the Passover, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and was greeted by cheering crowds who laid down their cloaks and palm branches in front of him to honor his path. By every appearance this seemed to be a triumphant event for this rabbi from the hinterlands of Galilee now entering the very seat of culture, religion, tradition and power for the Jewish people. However, in less than five days, these very same crowds that lauded Jesus on Sunday would demand his crucifixion on Friday. Thus began holy week and the extraordinary story of betrayal, the Last Supper, the passion of the Christ and the miracle of Easter. Uniquely in the modern day, the commemoration of holy week does not fall on a fixed date on the calendar but is instead determined by a lunar and seasonal pattern tied to the traditional Hebrew calendar. This dates back to the earliest Christians who observed of the annual celebration in relation to Passover.

For many years (and as my devotion somewhat waned) this was just another right of Spring, another one of those seasonal holidays that we keep to mark the time of the year. A few decades back I wrote the song “Good Friday”, not in the sacred religious context, but more as allegory for a doomed past relationship. Still, I’ve always enjoyed Easter in spring and would make it an annual tradition to enjoy the music of Jesus Christ Superstar during holy week. This outstanding 1970 rock opera record by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber combines theatrical music with classic rock n’ roll. To me, that album always had interesting (albeit not completely accurate) interpretations of the many stories during holy week including the arrival in Jerusalem, the turning over of the temple, the last supper, the garden of Gethesemene, the denial and, of course, the trial, persecution and crucifixion of Jesus. However, that album always lacked a true ending or satisfying conclusion as it ends with the death rather than the resurrection of Jesus. (Check out my review of Jesus Christ Superstar here.)

Within recent years I have returned much more strongly to my Catholic faith and now have a much greater appreciation for that fantastical, impossible, miraculous event that capped off holy week and just how important that has been for the redemption of all of us humans. It is the conduit between the omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent creator and the mortals He created. It is the one true miracle that offers an open and guiding hand for each and every one of us towards the here after. And, as such, it can display our tragic human tendency to quickly turn away from that which is most true.

When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, people exclaimed “hosanna” and those very same people later screamed, “crucify him” with equal vigor. What had changed in that short intervening time? Had Jesus publicly done anything or said anything wrong? Of course not. The change was only in the popular will, and the very nature of people to go along with the crowd. We have seen such things in our own time and our own world and recent years, whether it be rioting for certain causes or blindly, obeying draconian orders under the guise of the apparent “public good”. Both the engine of human nature and the divinity of God are the most profound and extreme mysteries to us mortal men and this week holy week is the great confluence of both states.

~ Ric Albano

Rural country

A Note on Gratitude

Rural country

Happy Thanksgiving!

I think this is a remarkable holiday because, unlike all the rest on the national level, we don’t celebrate a historic event or remember a specific person or group of people. Instead, thanksgiving is really a holiday which celebrates a virtue, and that virtue is gratitude.

There’s the old adage that goes something like; “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days while they’re still happening” and as one gets older, one recognizes the wisdom of this statement. But I can honestly say that things have not been better for me personally than they are today. And I think taking a moment to reflect on all the blessings of life and offering real gratitude may be the best way to realize that these are the good ole’ days.

I’ve long believed that there are four major pillars upon which we need to build a good life – physical, financial, social, and spiritual – and this year I’ve made great improvements in all of these. At this moment, I’m in the best physical health than I’ve been probably this century, my web business has been busier than ever in recent months, I’m working on the best music I’ve ever produced and I have . There’s still a lot of work to be done, but it’s good to be heading in the right direction.

And then there’s my incredible family, starting with my incredible wife of 27 years, our four adult children, my mother who is still going strong well into her eighties, and especially that pleasant, curious, and happy little granddaughter with whom I’ve been bonding with more and more as she gives me fresh enthusiasm for this world. And she could not have better parents than my son and daughter-in-law, who are so well adapted to being first time parents.

Now, with all this happy-happy stuff, I am still aware that a shoe could drop at any moment and all this great “luck” can come crashing down. There’s tragedy in every life ultimately, and it’s times like those when we really need to turn to God. But I’d like to make the far less common gesture of turning towards God at this incredible moment in time when I reflect on how fortunate my family and I are at this time.

~ Ric Albano