No AI. Real music. Real musicians.

Road to the Sun is rooted firmly in rock and roll but sprawls magnificently across Americana, indie, progressive, classic rock, and symphonic soundscapes — always centred on the groove, always guided by Stan Snow’s commanding, smooth lead vocals and trailblazing guitar work. Much like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon or Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, the album creates a singular sound that, while expansive and dynamic, never deviates from its thematic heart. The result is an experience akin to a meditation walk through nature — suspended in air, open to light.

Lyrically, Road to the Sun lets the light in through a prism of mysticism, inner growth, and the kind of wisdom that only comes from living. It welcomes all elements of the human experience while primarily opening the window to brightness, radiance, and inspiration. Much like George Harrison’s visionary later work, Snow leads the way through profoundly reflective and sacred territory — philosophical lyricism woven into a musical tapestry of bright melodies and ever-shifting dynamic terrain.

Each of the twelve songs was written and recorded in the order it appears on the album. The sequencing is intentional and essential.

“Each album is like a symphony,” Snow says. “Each song like a movement or section. It’s intended to be actively listened to in the order the songs appear. That said, each song is intended to stand on its own, capturing the spirit of what the song is about.”

Road to the Sun features a remarkable cast of collaborators — all real musicians, all performing live instruments, with zero AI involvement in the creative process:

Stan Snow — vocals, guitars, and multiple instruments
Abe Laboriel Jr. — drums (Paul McCartney)
Valerie Pinkston — vocals (Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston)
Ben Smith — drums (Heart)
The Budapest Scoring Orchestra
…among others

Stan Snow‘s guitar work is the connective tissue throughout — a style shaped by fifty years of playing and informed by the influences of Larry Carlton, Robben Ford, Pat Metheny, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Steve Howe, Michael Hedges, Steve Morse, and many more. Every note, solo, lyric, groove, melody, voicing, chord progression, riff, and arrangement has to earn its place.

“The musicianship comes from 50 years of playing the guitar and other instruments,” Snow says. “Every note has to hold my attention — otherwise I get bored. Each song and production has to stand up to repeated listenings. It’s a craft, from beginning to end. Like solving a puzzle.”

“These days, most people are looking for authenticity. Real music, written and recorded by real musicians. No one I know likes to be fooled.”

1. The album takes its name from the Mesoamerican feathered serpent deity — a figure representing wind, knowledge, the union of earth and sky. What drew you to Quetzalcoatl as a central image, and how does that mythology thread its way through the album’s themes?

We have been aware of the feathered serpent deity for quite a while. he was central to Aztec, Toltec and Maya cultures. The legend also has it that he appeared as an old man with a long beard, who disappeared over the sea never to return. It is a standalone song, the other songs are about other subjects, but it’s a great track and makes a good title for the album.

There was also a Cretaceous azhdarchid pterosaur called Quetzalcoatlus which was the biggest pterosaur that ever lived. Tim said “when I wrote the music for Quetzalcoatl I was expecting Dick to write about the Dinosaur.  But Dick was drawn to all of that Aztec and Mayan stuff.”  Dick said “Right I was, it makes a better song, how do you write a song about an extinct flying dinosaur?”

• Yeah! Make sense. Well, “Quetzalcoatl” has been described as your most cohesive and adventurous record yet — heavy rock sitting alongside prog folk, jazz, a vampire waltz, and Zen philosophy. How do you hold all of those wildly different influences together under one roof without the album feeling scattered?

The Tirith in some ways is a unique band, many people find us difficult to directly compare to other bands and artists. Because our influences are so wide that is hardly surprising, and we aren’t trying to be like anybody else. Many current prog bands are heavily influenced by Genesis, we aren’t.  Neither do we play what we would refer to as standard prog, lots of thrashing around, complicated time signatures, seemingly just for the sake of it, and doom-laden lyrics strung together in an ad hoc style.  We play properly constructed songs, sometimes featuring stories, often with soaring instrumental sections. We are included in the prog rock genre really because there is no other genre that fits. I could give you a list of our influences but it would take up a whole page and you don’t really want that.

• The space narrative that began on “Tales from the Tower” and continued through “Return of the Lydia” gets a new chapter here with “Back to Space” — a stranded spaceman in New York, unable to adapt to city life, deciding the only way forward is back to the stars. How did that storyline develop over three albums, and was it always planned as an ongoing saga?

There was no plan, but it is a fascination.  It all started really with a song called “The Tower” when we were very young, about a tower on a distant planet surrounded by methane snow.  Tim was inspired by Ray Bradbury to write that song.  Most of the development of the theme though has been written by Dick. Dick says “the space theme and our ongoing story is always in the back of my mind when writing songs for a new album.  Where to go with it next? The song Return of the Lydia, the title track of the last album, seemed a logical move to bring the space ship back to earth but it also afforded an opportunity to fill in more details about the adventures along the way. And so we come to Back to Space on the latest album.”  “I’ve been thinking about that angle for a while, the nightmare of city life with surreal lyrics, and then the big chorus of Back to Space.”  Has the adventure finished? Not sure, but also not sure at this point where it might go. But you know its all a bit tongue in cheek.

• “No Mind (Mushin)” originated as an improvisation and explores the Japanese Zen concept of empty, thought-free flow — total presence and effortless action. How does that philosophy of improvisation and instinct inform the way The Tirith approaches music-making more broadly?

OMG, it doesn’t, we are not a band that does a lot of improvisation, but occasionally we do and then develop a tune from there.  But in real life we are inspired by this approach.  Tim first came across these ideas when practicing martial arts, it is basically a form of meditation, which has been adopted by both of us

• Tim Cox’s history includes being part of the production team behind Rozalla’s “Everybody’s Free (to Feel Good)” — still a dancefloor anthem today — before returning to his prog rock roots. Tim, how does that commercial pop and dance world experience shape the way you approach songwriting and production for The Tirith?

Working with drums machines, sequencers and samplers in the late 80s it became possible to create an entire arrangement of a song before recording it to tape and mixing it. This was a big step from mapping out a song on say, acoustic guitar or piano, and then rehearsing and arranging a band before recording and mixing.

This has had a huge influence on the way we can work nowadays. With modern Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) we can map out an entire song, before rehearsing and recording the individual members of the band, who can put their own style and interpretation on the song.  In dance music, most of the music remains programmed and sequenced, apart from the vocals. In our songs, pretty much everything is replaced by the musicians in the band playing in their own way.

• The band’s origins go back to Loughborough Grammar School in the 1970s — two boys sitting opposite each other with acoustic guitars, playing only original material from the very start. Over fifty years later, what is it about the Tim Cox and Dick Cory creative partnership that has kept it alive and relevant through everything?

It’s a special thing and we still like to do that, but it doesn’t really reflect the way we work together today.  We work together and separately to create the songs and we both have our own particular strengths. For Tim’s songs of which there are 3 on the Quetzalcoatl album, “Quetzalcoatl”, “Back to Space” and “Dancing With Vampires”, Tim will map out the whole arrangement of the song but without vocals, lyrics or topline.  Dick then works up a topline melody, writes the lyrics and makes it into a song sometimes suggesting changes to the arrangements along the way. Dick’s songs (of which there are 5 on Quetzalcoatl, “Rabbit Ings”, Spirit of the Volcano”, “Masters of Highways”, “Save The Oak” and “The Riddles”)  are usually presented in a rougher form as simple often chaotic complete songs with topline and lyrics, but then Tim sorts them out, changing the arrangements, adding instrumental sections and turning them into the finished article. “Moon King” is an Ant song but with extensive work on the arrangement and topline by Dick.  “The Slide” is a band collaboration, starting with a section from Tim, with a section by Ant in the middle.  Dick wrote lyrics and topline for both sections. “No Mind (Mushin)” started life as a band improvisation which grew and evolved into its final form. That’s the creative process, we love playing live and hope to translate that into live energy.

• Keyboardist Anthony Hill joined in 2022 and the band has spoken about how the lineup has genuinely gelled since then. What did Ant’s arrival unlock in the sound — and how has the dynamic between all four members shaped what “Quetzalcoatl” became?

Before I talk about Ant I would like to tell you about our drummer Paul Williams who can get overlooked.  Paul was our main drummer in the 70s before we went our separate ways.  He was the one who brought us back together after the in 2010.  Unfortunately he had to leave us again in 2012 due to heavy commitments with other bands.  But he rejoined us in 2020 and has been with us ever since. The Tirith always feels right with Paul sitting behind us on that drum stool.  He has an effortless bouncy technique which we love, having Paul on drums has made it possible for us to play our more difficult songs with relative ease. We are trying to keep him going for as long as possible (he does suffer from rheumatism now in his hands), so fingers crossed.

When Ant joined in 2022 it completed the circle. We had wanted a keyboard player for a while that fitted with us, and we had tried a few.  Keyboards up until that point were played by both Tim and Dick on record, but that was hard to replicate on stage. As a 3 piece we would bring keyboards on stage but our hands were mostly playing guitars, although Dick did also play keyboard pedals which were effective to some degree.  We had been aware of Anthony Hill for a few years and had spoken to him before, but at that time he was busy with his own band.  By 2022 he was fed up with them and contacted us asking to join The Tirith.  For Ant its been a steep learning curve, he has had to learn all our previous albums and the way we work technically, and has now started to contribute to the process, eg Moon King.

• The album closes with “The Riddles” — lyrics full of classic riddles, and at its heart M.O.A.I., Malvolio’s riddle from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, for which there is no solution. Why end the album on an unsolvable riddle — and is that a deliberate philosophical statement about the nature of prog itself?

We didn’t purposely intend to, its just when we ordered the album The Riddles ended up in that position, honest !  But seriously we like little quirks and mysteries, we did let you into the secret though.  Maybe we shouldn’t have and you would now be asking us, ”what is M.O.A.I. ?”

• The Tirith have performed at the Cambridge Rock Festival, HRH Prog, Sonic Rock Solstice, and venues across the UK and Europe. With “Quetzalcoatl” arriving in July, what does the live picture look like — and are there festival appearances or tour dates in the works to support the album?

Our next 3 gigs are all small festivals, Steel City Prog at Network Sheffield in Sept, our own festival Prog Rhino 3 at Greystones Sheffield in Oct, and Spriggan Fest in Reading in January 27.

• The band began as Minas Tirith in the 70s — named after a place in Middle-earth — and has always sat at that intersection of prog rock and dark fantasy. Looking back across fifty-plus years and forward into whatever comes after “Quetzalcoatl”, what does this band still have left to say?

Although we did originate all those years ago there were no recordings from that era. So it’s a lifetime compressed really starting in 2015 with the release of “Tales from the Tower” the songs of our youth. Followed by “A Leap into the Dark” in 2019 and “Return of the Lydia” 2022, both with newer songs.  But I think our latest Quetzalcoatl is surpasses all of them.

I think with Quetzalcoatl you have to immerse yourself in the whole album to really get it.  The tracks are all so different, they pull you this way and that, the moods change, but always with that underlying rock sensibility. The album is more keyboard based than our earlier albums, but the guitar solos are still there, just shorter than previously. We have tried to cut repetition down and there is a whole load of music in there.  Just dive in and immerse yourself in it!

And we still have a lot to say!

• “Anam Cara” is a Gaelic phrase meaning “soul friend” — a concept rooted in deep spiritual kinship and connection. Why that title for this record, and what does it mean in the context of what you were creating?

I originally had a Celtic mythology theme for this album, but drifted from that during the writing process but the phrase “Anam Cara” sounded right for the album. Music to me is like a soul friend.

• You’ve described this as your most experimental release yet — and Sun Raven’s sound already spans atmospheric prog, post-rock, sludge, jazz, and psychedelia. Where do you feel you pushed furthest into new territory on this album compared to your previous two records?

The first two records were more rooted in metal music with elements of progressive, alternative, ambient. I felt like I had gone as far as I could creatively within that style. For “Anam Cara” I wanted it to be more difficult for the listener to define a certain style and just wrote with almost total freedom but still having elements that made it sound like a Sun Raven album.

• Sun Raven is entirely your own vehicle — you write, compose, produce, and perform everything yourself. What does that total creative solitude give you that a band environment couldn’t — and is there anything it takes away?

I like having the freedom to create what I want without having to compromise for other people. Part of the reason Sun Raven is a solo project is because I haven’t been able to find like-minded musicians that live nearby to work with. Sun Raven started as a band with a vocalist and bassist but the creative process wasn’t working with those other musicians so I decided to do everything myself and make the music purely instrumental.

• The album draws comparisons to artists as varied as John Carpenter, Mogwai, Russian Circles, Tool, and Godspeed! You Black Emperor. When you’re composing instrumentally without lyrics to anchor the listener, how do you guide the emotional and narrative journey of a piece from beginning to end?

Song titles play an important role to set the mood of an instrumental song, I think they give the listener a visual starting point. Having an underlying melody is also important, even if the guitar part isn’t playing a lead guitar melody, having strong melodic notes within a chord progression creates a memorable song without a vocalist.

• “Anam Cara” is described as the perfect soundtrack for creative thinking — dense, hypnotic, and cinematic. Do you compose with a visual or narrative world in mind, and if so, what did the world of this album look and feel like to you while you were building it?

Sometimes I have a theme for a song and that will influence the type of instruments, chord progressions, time signatures I use. Other times it will just be a spark of inspiration that seems to come out of nowhere and I feel as if I am more of a vehicle for this creative process and I try and flow with it as much as possible.

• Three albums in and the project is still evolving rapidly. What does the horizon look like for Sun Raven — and is there a sound or a concept already forming that might take the project somewhere new?

I feel like I have hit a creative peak with this album and Sun Raven. There will probably be another Sun Raven album in the future but for the near future I am focusing on a new project that I hope will also become a band with other musicians, it’s called Evahfar and it will be the first public project to feature me on vocals as well as performing all the instruments for the debut EP. It’s sound is based in Alternative Rock with Jazz and Folk influences. I am really excited about it.

Anam Cara is a Gaelic phrase meaning “soul friend” — a term for someone who sees and accepts you completely, who meets you in the deepest part of yourself. As a title for an album of this scope and interiority, it is exactly right.

Anam Cara moves through its ten tracks with the logic of a dream — hypnotic, dense, and cinematically assembled, blurring the lines between atmospheric progressive rock, post-rock, experimental music, jazz, psychedelia, and the sludgy, distortion-heavy weight of heavy alternative. Heavy guitars coalesce with dream-like reverbs and beautiful, expansive soundscapes, creating something that sits comfortably alongside the work of John Carpenter, Mogwai, Russian Circles, Tool, and Godspeed! You Black Emperor — while remaining unmistakably Murray’s own.

The compositions achieve a strength greater than the sum of their parts — each piece built from interwoven inspirations that interact and evolve rather than simply stack. The result is the perfect soundtrack for creative thinking: music that fills space without demanding attention, commands attention without demanding anything in return, and rewards both passive listening and deep immersion with equal generosity.

Each track carries its own resonance — from the opening “Bridge Between Worlds” through the title track, the blank-slate meditation of “Tabula Rasa”, the prismatic “Kaleidoscope”, the ancient mythological pull of “Eiocha”, the shifting atmospheric weight of “Change of Season”, “Shadow of Truth” and the precise moment of “Kairos”, to the emotional declaration of “U R Everything” and the graceful departure of “Leaving Orbit.” Ten pieces. One continuous, coherent world.

Sun Raven is Stephen Murray’s creative universe — a project built on the freedom to go anywhere the composition demands, unconstrained by genre, expectation, or collaboration. Murray handles every element himself, shaping each track from initial idea to final mastered output with a composer’s instinct and a producer’s ear.

Anam Cara is his third full-length release and the point at which Sun Raven’s experimental ambitions find their sharpest and most confident expression. The sonic palette is broader than anything he has attempted before — progressive and post-rock at the foundation, with jazz, psychedelia, and experimental music woven through every arrangement. Heavy where it needs to be. Beautiful where that serves better. Always in motion.

The lead single “Save the Oak” is available now ahead of the album’s July 3rd release.

Quetzalcoatl takes its name and its spirit from the feathered serpent deity at the heart of Aztec, Toltec, and Maya civilisation — a god of wind, Venus, dawn, knowledge, and the union of earth and sky. The name is pronounced KET-suhl-koh-AHT-uhl, and the legend carries with it the image of an old man with a long beard who disappeared over the sea and never returned. It is, in other words, a myth about departure, transformation, and the things that endure across time. Fitting, for a band with this particular history.

Across twelve tracks, Quetzalcoatl moves with the range and confidence of a band that has genuinely found its groove. The influences are wide — folk, jazz, heavy rock, country, prog — and the album wears them all without strain, shifting between expansive cinematic arrangements and lean, hard-driving riffs, between introspective acoustic passages and full-band eruptions, between ancient mysticism and cosmic absurdism. Fans of Rush, Porcupine Tree, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Dream Theater, Opeth, and Spock’s Beard will find themselves deep in familiar and exciting territory.

Each track earns its place:

“Back to Space” revisits the space privateer narrative begun on Tales from the Tower — one of the spacemen, stranded in New York after his crewmates have all passed, unable to adapt to the nightmare of city life, makes a decision. The only way forward is back up. The song opens with a huge, dirty guitar riff from Tim Cox before cascading through chaotic verses, withholding its first chorus until the three-minute mark. Worth the wait.

“Rabbit Ings” is a foray into prog folk-rock — nylon string acoustic guitar introducing a song that moves between delicate acoustic passages and hard rock sections. The title draws from old Norse, referring to the marshy water meadows still embedded in Northern English place names. The flute? That’s Ant on keyboards.

“Dancing With Vampires” is a romantic waltz with a twist: the alluring female vampire, the beauty and the sweet perfume, and then — “we turn as she sinks her teeth into my neck.”

“No Mind (Mushin)” explores the Japanese Zen concept of the empty, thought-free mental state — that place of total presence where action becomes intuitive and effortless, free from ego, fear, and hesitation. Born from improvisation, it carries that quality throughout.

“The Riddles” closes the album with a rock song whose lyrics contain many common riddles — and one that has no solution: M.O.A.I., Malvolio’s riddle from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The album plays out, as ever, with a guitar solo from Tim Cox.

The Tirith‘s origins run all the way back to the 1970s, when guitarist Tim Cox and vocalist/bassist Dick Cory were schoolmates at Loughborough Grammar School — two boys facing each other with acoustic guitars, one a songwriter and Beatles-influenced folkie, the other a guitar player with a habit of writing strange songs. They formed a band called Minas Tirith (yes, that Minas Tirith — they were all deeply into Tolkien), performed exclusively original material from the very beginning, and played gigs around Loughborough with Paul Williams on drums before the band dissolved when Dick went to university.

What followed was over thirty years of parallel lives. Tim Cox went on to a career as a professional musician — playing in London bands including Escape from New York, Fracture, and Airstrip One, before moving into dance music production as part of the Band of Gypsies songwriting and production team. Their work with Rozalla produced “Everybody’s Free (to Feel Good)” — still a major dancefloor anthem to this day. Dick continued playing and writing throughout those decades, quietly building a body of work that would eventually find its home on later Tirith records.

They stayed in touch. In 2010, at the instigation of drummer Paul Williams, they came back together as The Tirith and have not stopped since. Three albums followed — Tales from the Tower (2015), A Leap into the Dark (2019), and Return of the Lydia (2022) — each noted for its conceptual scope and Tim Cox’s expressive guitar work. Keyboardist Anthony Hill joined in 2022, and with the current lineup now fully settled, the band have reached a new level of cohesion. Quetzalcoatl is the proof.

Over the past fifteen years The Tirith have performed across the UK — Sheffield, London, Leicester, Nottingham, Newcastle, Southampton, Hull, and beyond — as well as Rotterdam, and at festivals including the Cambridge Rock Festival, HRH Prog VI and XIII, Nene Valley Rock Festival, Sonic Rock Solstice, and Prog for Peart. They have supported Focus (twice), Karnataka, Gnidrolog (twice), and toured with Paul Menell (ex-IQ).

The Tirith are a UK progressive rock band formed in 2010, built on the partnership of guitarist/producer Tim Cox and vocalist/bassist Dick Cory, with Paul Williams on drums and Anthony Hill on keyboards. With roots stretching back to the 1970s and a discography that includes Tales from the Tower (2015), A Leap into the Dark (2019), and Return of the Lydia (2022), the band blend prog rock with folk, jazz, heavy rock, and conceptual storytelling rooted in mysticism, mythology, and the darker corners of the human imagination. Quetzalcoatl is their fourth album, out July 3, 2026.

Written by frontman and songwriter Rob Phillips, the song was inspired by the passing of his family member Reese Puckett, who died at the age of 20 due to fentanyl. “February’s Son” stands as both a personal elegy and a love song dedicated to remembrance, healing, and enduring connection.

“It’s one of the most difficult songs I’ve ever written,” says Phillips.
“My wife’s daughter lost her son, and we went to her home to comfort the family. I wrote this as a way to deal with the pain and senseless loss – a song for his family and friends to remember him by.”

Despite the emotional weight of the subject matter, the recording process unfolded naturally and organically. Sessions at Madison Studios captured the song’s authenticity and urgency, staying true to Siren’s Middle America storytelling roots. The track was brought to completion by engineer Wyatt Oates, whose production preserved the song’s intimacy and emotional clarity.

To visually complement the song’s message, Siren partnered with renowned lyric video director Wayne Joiner, whose portfolio includes work with Dream Theater, Kansas, Yes, Alter Bridge and Creed.

Given complete creative freedom, Joiner created a symbolic and emotionally resonant visual centered around an ancient chest releasing photographs and memories into the air. The imagery serving as a metaphor for remembrance and the lasting presence of loved ones in our lives.

“February’s Son” reflects Siren’s ongoing commitment to honest storytelling, and meaningful connection. More than a song, it is a tribute to life, love and the power of music to bring comfort in moments of loss.

The single and lyric video are now available on all major streaming and digital platforms.

Michael Thomas Brown has been around music for a long time. He studied Recording Production and Technology at Middle Tennessee State University, spent years teaching guitar outside Nashville, and eventually moved into orchestral composition, with instrumental works landing in TV productions internationally. This is his first traditional solo album, the first time he’s recorded his own voice, and he handled all of it himself – writing, producing, engineering, mastering, and playing nearly everything. Guitars, bass, percussion, synths, piano, and an assortment of sampled objects from around his house and yard: flower pots, soda bottles, a lawnmower, a fence. David Adkins contributes hand drums on one track, and John Shade plays the drum kit on another. Otherwise, this is entirely Michael Thomas Brown’s record.

The album sounds like its cover art, an acoustic guitar floating on a serene ocean, witnessing the sun rise. It’s like Michael Thomas Brown is impersonating the warmth of the guitar in his own vocals. The album blends musically because of that. It stays relatively warm and simple in its arrangements the whole way through, but each song becomes distinct because of its unique thematic impact. There is some really great songwriting here. Let’s go through some highlights.

“You’re Like the Sun” is a wholesome love song. The sun is the biggest star we interact with daily, and its rising every day is an intrinsically positive event because it signals the start of a new day. It makes perfect sense to draw a comparison between the sun, which gives everything life, and your lover. Michael Thomas Brown adds to the hook that the sun keeps the monsters away, which, in relation to a loving partner, can mean that the aura of love weakens monsters; it signals to predators that you are not to be messed with because your love fortifies you.

“Universe” talks about the connection between the internal and external universe. We are museums of everything we have ever loved. Like the “real” or outer universe, our internal universe expands all the time and will continue to expand till the very end. Michael Thomas Brown highlights that it’s not just good things that get added to our internal universes, but also every tragedy, but he wouldn’t change a thing about it because life is to be experienced as a whole, and the tragedies are fundamental to the complete experience.

“Into the Deep” does wonders for the immersion into the listening experience of this album, as there are samples of beach and ocean sounds as the guitar melodies lull us into the deep end of the ocean. But it’s not a terrifying experience; on the contrary, it’s very soothing to swim in the dark with the stars as your only light. I personally found it very calming to meditate to this song.

“The End” is suitably the final track on the album. It’s much more atmospheric than anything else on the album. The ambience is done masterfully, and there is this Pink Floydian quality to the melodic approach of the entire song, but especially the guitar solo. Overall, this is what music plays when you drive into the sunset, which is how this album ends in my mind. It starts with the sun rising and ends with it setting. Thematically, the song is about how at life’s end, there are no regrets because we found love and hope on the journey, and that’s more than enough.

For a debut vocal album, made alone in a bedroom while undergoing cancer treatment, Dreams, Monsters, and the Universe carries itself with a quiet confidence that a lot of more resource-heavy records never quite find. The RIYL comparisons to Peter Gabriel and Pink Floyd are not idle – there’s that same sense of music being used to process something real, without letting the processing become the whole point. Michael Thomas Brown said he wanted a place to set down the weight of the heavy things. That’s exactly what this album sounds like, and it’s worth your time.

Brown’s own words set the stage better than any description could:

“I began writing and recording this concept album in my small bedroom studio while undergoing treatment for Stage IV metastatic cancer. It became my own kind of therapy. A place to set down the weight of the heavy things, free my mind and focus on something I could control. In those moments, I learned to face my daily fears, acknowledge the people I love, and ponder the big questions — what life is, what it means, and how we all must accept that it doesn’t last forever.”

The album’s guiding philosophy is Newtonian in its elegance — for every action, an equal and opposite reaction. A dropped ball bounces back. Planets are pushed and pulled by gravity’s endless dance. Happiness and sadness, love and heartbreak — all part of the same rhythm. The bad things that happen to us, Brown argues, can become the catalyst for something extraordinary. Dreams, Monsters, and the Universe is his proof of that proposition, made flesh in nine songs.

Recorded entirely by Brown himself — guitars, bass, percussion, synths, piano, and an extraordinary array of found sounds sampled from objects around his house and yard, including flower pots, soda bottles, fans, his lawnmower, and a fence — the album achieves a sonic world that is both intimate and expansive. The only additional musicians are David Adkins, who played hand drums on “You’re Like the Sun,” and John Shade, who played drum kit on “Universe.” Every other note, texture, and layer is Brown’s alone.

For fans of Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd / David Gilmour, and Blue October, the record will feel immediately familiar and entirely fresh at once — alternative and indie rock at its core, with progressive structure and indie pop sensibility woven throughout. It is the sound of a man who has spent decades studying music from the inside out, finally bringing all of it to bear on something wholly his own.

Dreams, Monsters, and the Universe is Brown’s first traditional solo album, his first time committing his singing voice to record, and the first project he has written, produced, engineered, and mastered entirely himself. For an artist with his background, that combination of firsts carries considerable weight.

“It was a labor of love,” he says, “met with humility.”

Brown grew up in rural Alabama, playing KISS and AC/DC songs on a Sears guitar — the classic origin story of a kid who found something in music and never let go. He later studied Recording Production and Technology at Middle Tennessee State University and, while teaching guitar outside Nashville, began studying orchestral composition. That path led to his instrumental works being licensed for use in television programmes around the world.

Today, he lives in Crystal River, Florida with his wife and best friend Lori, occasionally performing fingerstyle guitar covers of 80s New Wave music at local restaurants. He remains, in his own words, forever a student — as long as he is playing, he is learning.

He is also still in the fight. And he is optimistic.

“I’m optimistic about the future because I’ve come to believe the harder you fall, the higher you bounce back. At least that’s what Sir Isaac said.”

From the very first song on the album, “Man on a Wire” Mr. Grossman demonstrates his ingenious usage of harmony to create dreamy soundscapes – the colour palettes shift like a gradient from dark to light, all while the textures provide this distinct airy feel that makes it seem like we’re flying but not soaring, flying gently through gentle pink clouds. The listing on Apple Music categorizes this album as pop, but as we move to the second song, it becomes clear that this album is anything but pop. “Isn’t It Romantic” is like an avant garde fusion between trip-hop and vocal jazz of the 60s.

“Put a Scarf” feels like a marriage between 90s soul music and a Chick Corea song. The lyrics are very striking and very much are about pouring one’s heart out about personal insecurities, and the soulful vocal deliveries really help the delivery of such lyrics, and the harmony stays conventional for most of the song’s runtime to support this heartfelt outpour of emotion. But it evolves as the song goes on and gets spicier and more intense as the song builds to its climax.

⇒ Check our interview with Mr. Grossman here.

“Spice Tree” is appropriately full of spice with weird, slightly detuned synth lines and unconventional chord changes. “Blow Me Away” is instantly recognizable as a song inspired by the 90s trip-hop movement with its choice of textures and the way the vocals are mixed, and obviously the rhythmic devices at play. While “Fingertips” offers more of a Brazilian pop vibe with its harmonic choices, like a bossa nova with a more modern straight-ahead rhythm section. As you can see the album shifts genres almost every song like a chameleon that adapts its colors to the song’s narrative.

After a Fashion is the kind of record that rewards repeat listens precisely because it refuses to stay in one place. Grossman has been putting out material since 2022, and the range has always been there, but this album feels like the fullest expression of it yet – ten songs that cover serious ground without ever feeling scattered. For anyone with an appetite for music that doesn’t fit neatly into a single box like so many of our own emotions, this one is worth your time.

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⇒ Check our chat with the band here.

The four-piece, featuring Marie Gutierrez on vocals, David Ballon on guitar, Joan Torres on bass, and José Linares on drums (collaborating remotely from Puerto Rico), has great chemistry here, playing to each other’s sonic strengths, and the production is also aware of this. The mix gives everyone room to breathe without anything getting buried. The track has a real spacey quality to it – there’s weight in the riffs but also this expansive, almost atmospheric pull that keeps it from feeling like straight-up hard rock. Gutierrez is the centerpiece, though, and her high notes on “Starfire” are where the song really opens up. The production leans into that, letting those moments hit with the kind of clarity that makes them land.

With two more singles already scheduled, 6 Speed Supernova is clearly playing a longer game here. If the arc holds the same quality as “Starfire,” this comeback run is worth following through to the end.