
Steve Howe has announced he is to release his new solo album Love Is on 31st July through BMG Records. The release 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. Steve 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.
Howe comments: “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. 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.”
Howe invited Jon Davison to join him “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.”
Love Is was written, engineered and produced by Steve Howe with further engineering and mixing by Curtis Schwartz. Howe comments: “I write in my own studio and then go to see Curtis in his studio. 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.”
Track List:
1 Fulcrum (instrumental)
2 See Me Through
3 Beyond The Call (instrumental)
4 Love Is A River
5 Sound Picture (instrumental)
6 It Aint 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 538608601
180gm Black vinyl in Gatefold sleeve with liner notes by Steve Howe & lyrics
Release date: 31st July 2020
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