Tag: Dylan Howe

STEVE HOWE Announces the Release of Guitarscape on 27th September 2024

Guitarist Steve Howe releases his new solo album Guitarscape on 27th September on his own HoweSound label. The album will be available on CD, vinyl and digitally as Dolby Atmos.  Pre-order the album here: https://lnk.to/hkKdov

Guitarscape marks a new chapter for the YES and ASIA legend as he presents, what amounts to, a guitar masterclass. “What I’m doing,” said Steve, “is focusing on what I do well and what I love to do.” Guitarscape features 14 new instrumental tracks in a host of musical styles, from rock through to acoustic and classical, each bearing that unmistakable Steve Howe sound. Steve plays acoustic, electric, steel and bass guitars along with keyboards and is joined by his son Dylan on drums. Steve has written all of the tracks and produced the album.

“This album has given me the opportunity to do something different,” says Steve. “I bought a Novatron Summit keyboard and found that it had a wealth of inspiring sounds. It gave me a golden opportunity to create my own keyboard structures – chordal movements and structures that I thought were a bit different.  I think differently on a keyboard, I don’t see the chords looking the same but then I had fun playing around with the guitar to see where that goes.

“I’ve utilised most of the colours, as I like to I think of my styles, and I’m always pleased when I hear them running through and it moves from a steel, maybe, to a Spanish guitar. Because it’s a different sort of album, I’m not using terribly conventional chord sequences but things that give me a fresh feeling and opportunities to improvise and stretch out as well as be melodic and make this a nice tuneful experience.

“I began feeding the tracks to Dylan. We get on great and he seems to know what to play around my guitar, it’s almost instinctive. Dylan and I fit together really beautifully. We’ve had the chance to do this together, so it’s wonderful.

“The bass parts and the keyboards are pretty interesting, everything had to be interesting but also work together. I like doing things that are super fresh and this album says what I am today.”

Steve Howe – Guitarscape is released by HoweSound on 27th September 2024.

Guitarscape – Track Listing

1. Hail Storm (2.22)

2. Spring Board (2.45)

3. Distillations (1.48)

4. Up Stream (3.17)

5. Secret Mission (3.26)

6. Passing Thoughts (2.36)

7. Touch The Surface (3.21)

8. Spring Rhyme (2.02)

9. Equinox (3.04)

10. Seesaw (2.12)

11. Gone West (3.03)

12. Suma (1.34)

13. Spring Tide (2.41)

14. Steel Breeze (2.57)

All tracks written by Steve Howe

Produced by Steve Howe

Assembled and mixed by Curtis Schwartz

Steve Howe, YES guitarist, releases his solo album LOVE IS on 31st July.

Legendary Yes guitarist Steve Howe has announced he is to release Love Is on 31st July through BMG Records. Love Is is Howe’s first solo album since the all-instrumental Time in 2011 and has a balance of five instrumental tracks and five songs. 

The album will be available as CD – gatefold digi-sleeve with 12 page booklet and LP – Black vinyl 180gm with gatefold sleeve, liner notes and lyrics. 

Link to Steve Howe Official store pre-orders: https://SteveHowe.lnk.to/D2CPR

Link to Amazon pre-orders:https://SteveHowe.lnk.to/LoveIsPR

Steve Howe sings lead vocals and plays electric, acoustic and steel guitars, keyboards, percussion and bass guitar on the instrumentals while Yes vocalist Jon Davison provides vocal harmonies and plays bass guitar on the vocal tracks. The album also features Dylan Howe on drums.

Many years in the making, Love Is brings together a consistently strong and polished listening experience, forging the very best from the writing and playing throughout the album. This may well be considered the real ‘stand out’ album of Howe’s solo career. The instrumentals keep a highly progressive rock guitar style to the fore, with songs that explore stories of lives lived and lives only just begun. Love Is A River is the central longer song with several textural shifts, featuring a theme played on 12 string and steel guitars.

Portrait of English progressive rock musician Steve Howe, taken on February 3, 2020. (Photo by Will Ireland/Prog Magazine)

“I called the album Love Is because it hints at the central idea that that love is important but also love of the universe and the ecology of the world is very important,” says Steve Howe. “Alexander Humboldt went around the world and recognised we are destroying the planet but that was 200 years ago! We are still destroying the planet and, I suppose, my songs show the yearning I have for the love of nature and how beauty, art and music all stem from nature. There is a theme about those things, love, beauty, ecology, nature and wonderful people.

“Love Is A River just seemed a very important track to me, a sort of quintessential track with lots of moods, lots of interesting things going on with steel guitars and acoustic guitars. Further tracks grew from time spent writing in my studio.

“See Me Through looks at the idea that we get through life by not driving ourselves that hard but attempting to achieve things with people who help you along the way and Imagination is dedicated to my granddaughter Zuni. It’s about how I see some of the things she’s experienced in her short seven years.”

“I invited Jon Davison to sing harmonies with me and add bass on the songs. If he was singing on the songs I thought why doesn’t he play bass as well and it turned out nice. He’s been with Yes for seven or eight years and he’s a great guy, great performer and a great interpreter of Yes songs.“I’ve been singing for years, mainly in harmony but I’ve sung lead on lots of my own albums before and I feel that, as I’ve got older, I’ve got a grip on that and, hopefully, it’s improved over the years.”

The album includes many distinctive Steve Howe signatures among the instrumental tracks from the delicate beauty of Fulcrum, Beyond The Call and Pause For Thought to upbeat rock, The Headlands, and the jazz-tinged Sound Picture.

“The instrumentals are like a mood, a place I went to one day, thought this is nice and then I develop that to a point where it’s a finished track. There might be key ingredients that I thought about using musically that I like, that I’m drawn to, and then developing them into something.”

Love Is was written, engineered and produced by Steve Howe with further engineering and mixing by Curtis Schwartz. “I write in my own studio and then go to see Curtis in his studio,” Howe explains. “We expand the tracks and put them on Pro Tools and everything starts to be possible. At some point, probably around 2 years ago, Dylan came down to Curtis’s studio and we recorded the drums on some of the tracks. I could see a balance of five instrumental tracks and five songs and there was a feeling that it was an album, sitting there, looking at me.”

The track listing for Steve Howe’s Love Is album is:

1 Fulcrum (instrumental)

2 See Me Through

3 Beyond The Call (instrumental)

4 Love Is A River

5 Sound Picture (instrumental)

6 It Ain’t Easy

7 Pause For Thought (instrumental)

8 Imagination

9 The Headlands (instrumental)

10 On The Balcony

Formats:

CD Catalogue No. 538608592 Gatefold digi leeve with 12 page booklet with liner notes by Steve Howe & lyrics

LP – Catalogue Number – 538608601180gm Black vinyl in Gatefold sleeve with liner notes by Steve Howe & lyrics

Release date: 31st July 2020


Link to Steve Howe Official store pre-orders: https://SteveHowe.lnk.to/D2CPLink to Amazon pre-orders: https://SteveHowe.lnk.to/LoveIsPR