Verian Thomas @ NSI

Verian Thomas creates melodic ambient-infused guitar pieces which delight and inspire daydreams. His latest release explores new and modern realms of that very old-fashioned concept–the search for beauty.

The search for beauty involves an endless series of intuitive calculations. The musician seeks out the moments (or seconds) in which beauty appears, even if only its creator recognizes its sleek sheen. Some share the experience that beauty channels fully formed from a deeper place, “manifesting” as a song.

Verian Thomas’ Median: I deals with the creation of beauty in a more trackless land. The guitarist plays the guitar without a particular melodic goal or purpose, with the mind wandering. From the edges of the imagination (the curtilage of the “intellectual property”), a glimmer of an idea appears. Verian grasps that idea like an unmet friend, refining the initial thought and building upon it. Layer by layer, melodic idea by melodic idea, addition, discard, re-creation, a song appears. When the song no longer calls out desperately for change, it has achieved its equilibrium. Then the recording begins. Each song is in this small way presented in the median between despair and wild optimism.

Median I is the first of at least three E.P’s that sit between the two previous releases Miniatures and Massive, being made up of tracks that are, in length, a median of the short tracks on the former and the long track of the latter. Each track has been recorded on a single guitar (Fender Stratocaster U.S.A) although, unlike previous releases, some percussion is included and a vocal on the final track. The working method has always been to accept first recorded takes and this method applies to the Median E.P’s but more time was spent on composition before anything was committed to tape. Hopefully this will be evident when listening.

The final track, ‘An Autumnal’ (the artist’s favorite) includes vocals by Mary Sarah

I lose all fear when you suck the breath from my lungs
The split second that turned into lifetimes
The scent of your pillow after you have gone
An Autumnal

Download Page

This one was called ‘Dial Tone’.

Verian Thomas - Dial Tone Demo

I was, again, rather pleased with how this was coming along, a nice gentle thing that was doing what I wanted it to. Only this mp3 remains frollowing the fatal PC crash. At least that’s something.

Verian Thomas - essence

Recently I suffered a PC crash. Ironically it happened at the precise moment I was finally backing everything up. As a result I lost all the master files of tracks I was working on but had MP3′d them. I can’t really complete them now but rather than have them sit around doing nothing I’ll post what I have.
The first is a collaboration with NSI artist ‘Pseudo’ and is titled ‘Re-Petition’. It was coming along quite well I thought, shame it’s disappeared.

Verian Thomas Featuring Pseudo - Re-petition

As far as I can tell, the entire ‘Massive’ Album was played at Ambitar Radio in June, here:

http://www.ambitarradio.com/playlist.html

Which is nice.

Sometimes I’ll be fiddling around and come up with a track that I like, but I won’t actually be releasing. That’s one of the handy things about this blog, they can go here. This particular track, “Coventry 41” was inspired by old BBC recordings of public service announcements from 1941. Coventry, which is only a short distance from where I live, was torn apart by the air raids of November 1940 and April 1941.

I suppose it is about triumph of spirit more than anything else.

Verian Thomas - Coventry 41

For this track I used the new Fender Strat.

For almost 30 years I’ve been waiting to own a specific guitar. There are times in my life that I’ve been in a position to obtain it, but then something else would come up and the funds would drain away. On Saturday I travelled to Birmingham and in celebration of my 40^th birthday I bought it.

A U.S. Standard Fender Strat. Here it is, so new I haven’t taken the stickers off yet.

Today, using the new guitar, I started work on a new album. This is the first pass at the first track.

Raindrop on an Eyelash

A track from the ‘Massive’ album, Massive Pt. 6 (Then They Came Looking), appears in the Sound Free podcast. It’s always nice to be featured in a podcastso thanks to them from me. It can be found here

NSI release a new Thomas Nunnally Ensemble E.P. titled “The Tunnel at the End of the Light”

These tracks have been around for a little while waititng for us to release them, and now we finally have. It’s a bit different from the first E.P. but that is what TNE is all about really. It features the following tracks:

Rail Trail Outside Sudbury
Perkancal
Five R’s
Allen
Beep Beep

The full album is a free download at NSI

I’ve been working on a new track with Mary Sarah which is coming along really well. Initially I sent a guitar track and one that was a bit more filled out with some percussion and a bit of bass. Mary Sarah then, to my surprise and delight, went into a studio and recorded 4 vocal tracks. There are no words at all and it was left up to Mary Sarah to create somewhat abstract vocal tracks with no real guidance. She did a wonderful job and sent me the 4 tracks, each quite different, which I’ve been mixing together. I’m really very pleased with things, we both are, and as a result are now working on a 4 track e.p.