It is a humid and roasted evening in 2003…Mid summer in York,PA somewhere on Linden avenue…A now vacated place where creativity and home brew flowed with equal importance and strength for many years with the vastly creative Peter Richards at the helm….It was here that I first met Erich Steiger…a friendship that would have an ebb and flow not much different than the small brook that ran behind my house growing up….At times clear and fresh….teeming with life….Other times but a trickle…A gouge in the earth to let you know it is still alive and waiting to be replenished…Over the years we would come together on projects such as mastering or just a social event and for months at a time be in and out of communication…

By 2009 a project called Loud & Sad with Joe Houpert had become an all encompassing life project…We needed someone to give us proper recordings of piano and Erich was the logical choice…Some months later we were at Baltimore at Erich’s antilog compound working on those piano mixes and adding some tape layers when HMS was born through a late Friday night improvisation…. HMS has allowed Joe and I to completely step out form our sometimes preconceived placements in Loud & Sad to explore completely new places…higher grounds and hidden passages that lined the cliffs we were climbing as Loud & Sad but had not yet taken the time to explore…With Erich as our guide and new participant we proudly present to you these new places….

The artwork for this release was provided by Mike Homer, current director of the david kordansky gallery, who has been a friend of loud & sad related project for a long time. Mike shared this work with me as he was creating it and after seeing it in person on his bedroom wall I knew it was the right fit. Please download the ZIP for a full size version!