Linden Hale
Beyonder Paradowse

The goal of the album Beyonder Paradowse is to encode spiritual concepts into a work of popular music on multiple levels, encompassing rhythmic, harmonic, melodic, lyrical, structural, temporal and instrumental elements. This music is envisioned as being for a dancefloor that may be real or imagined but, either way, it aims to engage the body, mind and soul, and to arouse in the listener the twin forms of ecstasy that can be found in both the nightclub and the temple. The music structures time and space in a way that calls upon symbols of one-ness and infinity, leading the listener into a space of contemplation and wonder. Most importantly, it is an expression of gratitude for the vital influences that have inspired its making and a gift, in and of itself, for anyone who wishes to receive it. 

The compositional approach involved a kind of alchemy, in which the essential elements of my strongest musical influences were identified and extracted, in order for them to be re-combined into a potent new blend that aspired to be greater than the sum of its parts. The term ‘alchemy’ is perhaps appropriate, as the creative process involved combining and re-combining, working and re-working elements, with the aim of producing something ‘golden’ in the metaphorical sense of having a universal value. A significant degree of improvisation was inherent in the working process and the over-arching methodology was designed to allow for creative accidents and unknown outcomes to occur, a little like the medieval alchemist’s search for the elusive ‘philosopher’s stone’