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May 8, 2010 - We have completed mixing on 90% of the new CD. We have part of the Urban Pastoral and one last song to mix before we go to mastering. This should be done by the end of May. We have added some things to the CD that we were not planning on at first plus a lot of time has been devoted to my thesis work. Too much to do, not enough time to do it in. But, we'd rather spend the time to complete the mixes as best we can rather than rush them out. Soon, though! Very soon!There are also plans in the works for a CD release show/party in late August. Stay tuned. January 4, 2010 - Happy New Year everyone! It's going to be a good year, too! We are finished recording the new CD. Mixing sessions began this weekend. We should have the CD ready for mastering by the end of this month! Stay tuned for release details and show dates!October 5, 2009 - The past couple of weeks have been busy ones. Instrument tracking for the new CD is nearly complete - just a bass solo, some percussion and one minor rhythm guitar track to finish.We spent this entire weekend tracking the main vocals with Ashley for the Urban Pastoral. This is the main song on the new release, coming in at 36m 5s in length. We completed one major section of vocals (with several tracks of harmonies) this weekend! Much progress! Vocal tracking continues next weekend. More soon! September 1, 2009 - After much consideration we have decided to move our planned show at the Succop Theater on September 26 til sometime early next year. We are not satisfied - yet - with our new show and the staging of it. We want this new show to be a whole new experience for those of you who have seen us many times in the past. So, while we're sorry to somewhat postpone this show, we think you'll be glad we did! :)As far as the new CD goes, it's almost done. The music is recorded. We are working on final vocal tracks right now. It won't be long! March 20, 2009 - Just a small break in the action here for an update. The new song, Pan's Labyrinth, has now passed the 30 minute mark. We have begun recording on it, too! Silhouette and Erato's Pulse are nearly finished. There are two other pieces - The Temple of Nyx and Selene, Selene that will soon be arranged and ready for recording as well. So far we are on track to complete the new CD by mid-June and have it ready for release by our appearance at the 3RP progfest in August!January 28, 2009 - We just signed the contract to play in the upcoming Three Rivers Progressive Rock Festival in August.See the SHOWS page for more details. We are still ensconced in the studio, writing and recording the follow-up to Pyre of Dreams. As mentioned in the last update, the new music has taken a decidedly serious progressive turn, for the most part. We have expanded Pan's Labyrinth into a rather massive song that may encompass the entire CD. New parts to it include The Tears of Selene, The Temple of Nyx and a part currently called Urban Pastoral. The previously mentioned pieces Silhouette and Erato's Pulse have been incorporated into this song as parts of the whole. Lots of fun! :) We are hoping to have the new CD ready for release by late summer. No promises though..... September 12, 2008 - There is much going on in the world of PD, even though we've been silent for a while on here! We've been busy writing new material for a new CD. Right now we have four pieces we are working on; Silhouette, Pan's Labyrinth, Andromeda, and Erato's Pulse. As you can tell by the names of the songs, we're definitely taking a deeper turn into the realms of mythology. It wasn't intentional - but it has been fun so far! We're guessing the theme of the new CD is going to be mythology :). The songs, so far, are also taking a turn into the serious progressive side of music, a lot more complex than what we've previously done (and more challenging to play, too!). So far, Silhouette is the shortest song, clocking it at 7m 20s!Speaking of such things, recording for this new as of yet unnamed CD has already begun. We are nearly done recording Silhouette and will begin the recording process for Erato's Pulse very soon! Also, speaking of CD's, we've been informed by our record label, ProgRock Records, that our Pyre of Dreams release has sold out! WAY COOL!!! Time for a reprint release! In other news, after a lenghty search, we have finally found a new bass player to fill the shoes left by the passing of John Lally last summer. Mr. Roman Prokopenko has taken over the low end frequency department for us. Roman's an awesome player with a great sense of humor - not to mention a very cool Russian accent! :) You'll be seeing much more of him on here and live very soon! We're all very happy to have him as a new part of the band! Finally - for now - we have booked another show at our favorite venue, the VFW in Springdale, PA for a Thanksgiving bash on Saturday evening November 29, 2008. Be sure to be there as this show will have several never before heard PD songs played live for the first time, not to mention premieres of a couple new songs from the new, unnamed CD! Oh, and a partially new stage show as well! We hope to see you at the show! December 5, 2007 - We are now officially booked for two new shows, May 10, 2008 at the Carnegie Music Hall and June 28, 2008 at the Western Pennsylvania Faery Festival.See the SHOWS page for more details. We have also been extremely honored to have been voted Band and Record of the Month for September 2007 by the awesome people at the Progressive Rock and Progressive Metal website! Click on the link here and check out the article and all the other cool stuff they have on their website! We have also begun working on new music! We will be premiering some of it at the upcoming May 10 show. We hope you can make it! September 25, 2007 - Today is the official release date of Pyre of Dreams by Prog Rock Records. Cool Stuff! :)Some more good news - we've finally found a new bass player to take up the low end duties vacated by the passing of our friend, Mr. John Lally. Ben Bond is a 5 and 6 string bassist, formerly of the prog outfit Twilight Machine and currently holding down the duties on the low end for the local band "Into the Arena". Ben has been rehearsing with us most of this month and will be making his first live appearance with us on Saturday evening October 27, 2007 (see Shows page) We hope to see you there! Speaking of which, some slightly bad news....We have had to cancel the scheduled Friday night October 26 show due to the various things that have happened with the band since May. We regret having to do this but there is only so much we can accomplish at one time - especially when working with a a new member of the band. Better luck next time, eh? However, we hope you all can make it to the Saturday night show instead!!! We will be spending part of the coming winter months writing and recording new material for the next CD. We have ideas and partial songs already sketched out! It's going to be fun, as always! Stay tuned for more from PD.... August 7, 2007 - Writing news entries about the band for you guys out there in Cyberland is not always an easy task. Sometimes there are a lot of things going on but not much that is of any real interest to anyone (even us!). Other times there isn't much going on but there's a lot to write about.Sometimes, though, there are those situations in which the words are hard to find and the feelings hard to express. Sometimes it takes a while to focus. The past couple of weeks have been a bittersweet time for those of us in PD. The bitter part of this came with a phone call on Wednesday July 18, when we were informed our bass player, John Lally, had passed away in his apartment on the evening of July 14. John had only been with PD for just under two years but his presence and playing had taken center stage on several occasions as he helped finalize and record the bass tracks on 6 of the 12 songs on our new CD Pyre of Dreams. John was also very instrumental in helping to bring PD back to life after a relatively dormant time period in our live shows, introducing us to drummer Scot Harvey and keyboardist Jim Waugaman. John had become a good friend to all of us in the band and his friendship will be missed! Rest in Peace, John! The sweet part of this came a mere three days earlier, on July 11, when we in PD did something we never thought we'd do! We signed to record label! Yes, we are now on a major record label - Prog Rock Records! We are really happy with this as Prog Rock is an awesome label with some of our musical friends on it as well! You can check it out Prog Rock Records here. Check them out and the many cool artists on the label! You might find a number of other bands you'll like as well! Also, I've posted a few new reviews of Pyre of Dreams on our Reviews page. Check them out! May 15, 2007 - A huge THANK YOU to everyone who came to our sold out show at the Springdale Vets Saturday evening! We all had a great time and so did all the fans of the band! As anyone who was there knows, we were not calling the show a CD Release Party - but that's what it was! Our new CD - Pyre of Dreams - is now officially available!! We will be adding functionality to the website here in the very near term for people to purchase our CD's online. They will also be available shortly at places like CDBaby, Big Balloon Music and Amazon. I will update this news page as soon as those things are in place.Pay attention to the Shows Page , too, as we are in the process of booking several new shows. We have already booked a Halloween show for Saturday evening October 27, 2007 back at the Springdale Vets. We hope you can come out and have some Halloween fun with us! April 18, 2007 - The album - or, I should say, albums - have both been sent off to the printing company for replication. Yes, that's plural! In addition to our main release of Pyre of Dreams, we are running a very limited, special edition copy with a slightly different sequence of songs. We decided to have a special master made that mirrors some of the studio efforts we made while recording the concept piece "Temple in Time". There won't be many copies of this and they will mainly be available only at shows - but it will definitely give listeners a slightly different perspective on the Temple in Time concept.The official release date for the new CD is May 12, 2007 - which also happens to be the date of our next live show (see Shows page for details). Come to the party and celebrate the release of this very-long-awaited CD!!! February 20, 2007 - It's now totally official! Pyre of Dreams is DONE! The CD was sent out to Peter Hopper of MasterView SoundCrafts in Ithaca, NY this morning. Peter was very instrumental in mixing, mastering (and even some recording) on our Evening Mirage and MoonSpell albums. In a strange twist of Fate (!!!), I was checking some old documents and found that on February 20, 1999, I had sent Peter the mastering notes and the song CD for our MoonSpell album! Strange indeed!Pyre of Dreams is a unique album for us. For one thing, it features three superb vocalists: Colleen Gray, Heidi Engel and DC Cooper (of Silent Force and Royal Hunt fame). DC appears as lead vocalist on two songs and backing vocalist on several others. This is the first time we've ever had a male lead vocalist on a song. DC also helped produce this album with me and provided some great ideas for things as well! We had a great time working with him. Even though I've worked with DC on other projects, this is the first time we've worked together on Persephone's Dream material. The album also features two additional bonus tracks that are entirely different versions of two pieces that appear on the CD. You'll have to get the CD to find out which two and what they sound like :) The tentative release date is still March 15. However, that may change - SLIGHTLY - depening on how long mastering and printing take. If the release date is pushed back, it won't be too long after March 15 regardless. I'll update things here as necessary. Also, check out the Shows page. We're doing a show in Springdale at the VFW on Saturday evening, May 12. Cool venue! Be there if you can to hear live versions of material from the new CD as well as all previous albums too! February 6, 2007 - Due to the complete inability of Damian and the Moose Club in Lawrenceville to get their act together - and keep it together - we have moved the planned show there to the VFW Hall in Springdale (see Shows page). The show will be Saturday May 12, 2007, starting at 7:00pm. There will be an opening act, among other things. We've played this hall several times and it's cool! We hope to see you there!January 19, 2007 - IT'S DONE!!!!We are currently assembling the songs and song segues onto the CD for mastering. This CD is being sent out for mastering next week. We are currently looking at a release date of March 15, 2007 for Pyre of Dreams! This depends, of course, on a bunch of other people, but our job is finished. The CD is completed. Stay tuned for the Real Thing!!! Pyre of Dreams Mix Status as of January 19, 2007 December 20, 2006 - Please note the change in date for our show at the Moose Club! Due to a scheduling conflict within the club itself, we had to move our planned January 20 show to Saturday, March 3, 2007. More details soon!The album is almost ready for mastering! The past couple of weeks have been extremely busy for me with research work, so production time was very limited. Now that the semester is over, I am spending all available time tying up the few loose ends on the production. All the songs are mixed with the exception of one version of Dragon's Breath (Soliloquy of a King and Camlann collectively). We are actually going to put two versions of this song sequence on the CD. You'll just have to wait for the album to see and hear why :) The album will be sent out for mastering first week of January. October 1, 2006 - We had a great time on air with Allen at WBWC 88.3FM in Cleveland on Tuesday! Thanks Allen! Thanks, too, to the listeners and those that called in to talk with us while we were there! We hope to return to Allen's show soon, new CD in hand, for the world premiere of the finished album! We hope you will all tune back in for a listen when we do!Work continues on the album, too. We've finished two more mixes and are moving on to the remaining ones this week. In between mixes, we're rehearsing a live show that keeps getting bigger each time. We're playing a private show on October 14 here in Pittsburgh but hope to book a few more soon! Stay tuned! August 31, 2006 - Work has continued on the new CD. We're down to mixing now as everything else has pretty much been completed. The mixes are sounding really good and we've arranged to have our new CD mastered by Peter Hopper at MasterView SoundCrafts in Ithaca, NY. Those of you with our Evening Mirage and MoonSpell albums know Peter's work as he was the mastermind behind the mixes and masters of those two releases. We are on schedule to be finished mixing the album by mid-September.We are also preparing a live show and have been rehearsing an 11 song set for the past couple of weeks. We will also be appearing on WBWC FM in Cleveland some time soon to promote our new CD and progressive rock in general. Stay tuned for that time and date! July 2, 2006 - Some sad news from the PD camp today. Our longtime companion, musical director and studio boss, Mo, passed away today. While it may seem silly to mention a dog on here, many visitors to the studio and local friends of the band knew Mo. He was a friend to everyone. He'd been around since the beginnings of the band and was always present in the studio. He will be missed very much. Rest in peace buddy! Mo. December 7, 1995 - July 2, 2006.June 27, 2006 - Just a quick note: Allen Thompson of WBWC 88.3FM radio in Cleveland premiered and exclusive cut from our new album tonight on his three hour progressive music extravaganza Somewhere Between Sunrise and Sunset. The song in question is Mist - the first song in the five song concept piece, Temple in Time, written for the new album. Thanks Allen! Way cool! You can check out more of his show, which is broadcast every Tuesday evening from 10:00pm - 1:00am ET here:Between Sunrise and Sunset Website Between Sunrise and Sunset Playlists As an update, half of the new album is mixed at this point. I am working on it almost daily. We are currently working on the layouts for the CD booklet and preparing to get the disc mastered as soon as we finish the mixes. We are looking to print the new CD around the end of August. In other news...strangely enough, we have some basic ideas and pieces for a new album coming together. So far the pieces are all based on mythological characters: Erato, Pan and Tantalus. But...this is something for a later update...after the new CD is released! :)
May 30, 2006 -
We received some really cool news yesterday! One of the new songs on our upcoming album, Android Dreams, has been awarded Song
of the Day on Garageband.com for June 4, 2006. It also won Best Female Vocals in a Progressive Rock song for the week ending May 29, 2006.
That's cool! April 26, 2006 -
Well, here we are. April 26, 2006. For those of you who have been checking - forever - on the website for
some indication of when our new album will be released, I have good news - SOON! As you can see, this is a new
look to the PD website. I am preparing a whole new one for the release of the new album, Pyre of Dreams,
which is nearly complete. Originally, it looked like late last summer was going to be a release date but, as they
say Life is what happens while you are making other plans! |
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