Follow Ian Randall Thornton

 

Here is an artist we have been keeping an eye on for a while now, waiting for the day he would surprise us. 

Here we are! With this new single, Ian Randall Thornton makes a strong impact.

A multi-instrumentalist, the artist offers us a timeless performance. 

Almost 4 minutes, completely disconnected, as if time had stopped. 

You just have to close your eyes, and discover guitar, piano, violin, and delicately placed vocal harmonies, which take care of the magic. 

And the magic happens quite quickly, as soon as the artist starts to sing. 

A controlled, muted, and perfectly calibrated voice, full of restraint, over an instrumental that evokes a longing for vast landscapes. 

The artist completely re-evaluated his approach for this album, and tells us about the incredible realization that accompanied it:Send Somebody was a bit of an experimental song from the start, and it ended up being a kind of gateway to discovering the rest of the album.

I wrote it a few years ago when I started experimenting with recording my own music.

Honestly, I was struggling to write songs at that point in my life, and I realized that the source of my writer’s block was the pressure I was putting on myself to ‘write the perfect song’ and say something profound.

When I approached writing with this pressure, it seemed to immediately kill inspiration and creativity.

So, my solution was to completely release the pressure and write songs that I never intended to hear.

I picked up my guitar, changed it to a new tuning, looped a guitar line on my computer, and started layering different instruments and vocal swells. As I continued to create, something interesting began to happen.

This completely reversed my songwriting process.

Instead of finishing a song by myself on a guitar and then taking it to the studio to produce it, I just started creating blindly, allowing the production and the song itself to influence me and, in a way, tell me what it wanted to be and say.

This writing process really paved the way for this entire album.

The theme of “Wide Open” is peace and the search for serenity through the humble act of letting go of control.

And you can definitely feel the experimental side of the song.

With an occasional oriental feel, the piece transports us into a kind of parallel universe, where all daydreams are permitted.

A beautiful musical journey, which we were eager to present to you.

And one more gem to find in our January 2020 Spotify playlist.