Karl Clews Releases “Nomad”
Karl Clews has released a new album called Nomad, which concludes his first trilogy of bass solo and bass-forward albums. The bassist, who lives in Galway after years in London and Paris, created the album into four thematic “suites” depicting a traveler’s journey.
“Beginning in Telluria, a familiar landscape of cities and towns, of culture and philosophy, our intrepid nomad heads out to Oceanea, a seascape of uncertainty, fluidity, and hidden dangers as he tries to determine his direction in the world,” liner notes explain. “From there, he alights in Empyrea, a lofty land of dreams and ambition, of achievement and invention. But still, the nomad moves on in his quest to experience all there is to experience in life and finds the end of his journey, if not his life itself, in the dark place that is Eschatonia, a landscape of fear, destruction, confusion, and death.”
Nomad builds on his previous releases Dissident and Navigator with more complex and varied compositions. He also utilizes the piccolo and tenor basses more, with some acoustic bass mixed in. To fill out the arrangements, Clews called on longtime collaborators, including drummer Richie Dittrich, saxophonist Bertrand Huvé, guitarist Ciaran Storey, and trumpeter Michael Barkley.
Check out the video for “Speaking In Tongues”:
Nomad is available now on CD and as a digital download (iTunes, Amazon MP3, and Bandcamp).
Nomad Track List:
- Enforcer
- Speaking In Tongues
- Evangeline
- An Eye For An Eye
- Interlude: Thalassa
- Time And The River
- In Search Of Submarines
- Spartan
- Magnificence & Magnanimity
- Interlude: Flying West
- Lacuna
- Peloton
- Sunburn
- Santo Domingo
- Interlude: By The Light Of Other Stars
- The Last Days Of Reason
- We Are Not As We Were
- Warbaby
- Zhurba (Slavic Lament)
- Outro: Exodus
