Eastern Chronicle is the first personal project I’ve undertaken in nearly twenty years. It is a world music album — worldbeat, to be exact — that I wrote and produced on my mobile recording rig while traveling through the Orient and South Pacific Islands for 18 months. The album fuses live and field-captured ethnic textures, world environments, live orchestra, intricate percussion, native and indigenous vocals, international instrumental soloists, and my love affair with 80′s-era synth-pop and digital electronics in a way that strives to be comfortably intimate and beautifully expansive at the same time.
It has been one of the greatest joys of my life to write, record and produce this record. Eastern Chronicle has been the wind in my sails that I didn’t know I needed after a long many years of working in other mediums. One of the characteristics of this record is that I’m working with dozens of international musicians and singers in an awesome fusion of East and West. Some of these people are musical heroes of mine who I’ve only dreamed of collaborating with until now. The last eighteen months have been about editing all the audio that I recorded in the “wild” in places like Indonesia, Japan, China, Tibet, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand, and combining that with controlled studio sessions recorded in the United States and Europe. Western friends in Dublin, Hamburg, London, Phoenix, Amsterdam, Nashville, New York and Los Angeles also lent their immeasurable talents to this project — it has truly been an international brew.
Eastern Chronicle was released on Earth Day — April 22, 2013 — and is available at just about every digital carrier you can think of. Singles are being released exclusively through I (heart) Radio and Spotify. The physical CD will be available in record stores in Northern and Central Asia on release day and in select music retailers in North America on Memorial Day weekend (May 26), with Europe following the week after.
Not a fan of MP3 compression? You can download Eastern Chronicle in multiple high-definition formats right here at my website, deaneogden.com. For you audiophiles out there, this is a great option and will be the ONLY way to obtain the album in an uncompressed format ahead of the North American physical release in May.
Throughout the release schedule, I’ll be doing interviews and making the rounds in Los Angeles and New York to promote the release. Watch here at the website for the schedule and on my Facebook page for a more up-to-the-minute rundown. I’m also doing something very cool over at Soundcloud called “Behind the Sessions” (see below) which gives you more of a glimpse into the actual making of the record.
Creating Eastern Chronicle has been a marvelous experience of closing my eyes and just allowing my true inner music to really bleed through, unbridled and unabashed. That hasn’t happened in a long time, and I’m thrilled with the results. I really hope you enjoy listening as much as I’ve loved making it.