Albert Alan Owen
Following The Light

Recorded in 1982, Following The Light is the third album by British composer Albert Alan Owen recorded for the Apollo Sound Label.
Originally a Library oriented Music label, Apollo Sound by the mid 70s commissioned contemporary musical pieces from new composers, aiming presumably to provide atmospheric backgrounds for film, television and advertising, and to feed the burgeoning demand for ‘New Age’ music. Therefore comes Following The Light.

Following The Light is a deep and immersive listening experience. With the help of Katherine Sweeney on violin and Milada Polasek on electric piano and organ, Albert Alan Owen recorded Following The Light in “live” condition, taking profit of a strong use of the digital effects which were in its infancy at this time; the music was written to make the most of what technology was available, resulting a singular piece of music of sheer beauty.

The record demands to be considered as a stand-alone unit, its three sections unfolding elegant and propulsive by turns, as reoccurring themes answer each other through the layers. There are echoes of Reich and Riley in the use of delay, that warm rolling repetition and those bass pulses. But this is not in the service of a system. There is something more lyrical, more humane at work in the music.

With Following the Light, Albert Alan Owen has given us a record that stands outside of time and place, it’s familiar elements made strange and new, all bathed in magic hour light.

Lovely crafted tip-on sleeve. Remastered. 600 copies.