2011 – album by Benedict Roff-Marsh
Mountain & The Lowlands saw me return to the style of The Body Pool. I wanted an album that was a bit brighter and more New Age than Arcades. I had been listening to Kitaro’s Silk Road which I had only just purchased and so much of what he did appealed to me.
The idea behind this album is that ideas appear in a single location and just like a river, flow out into the world, picking up other things along the way. The spread of Buddhism seems the perfect representation of this concept as it seems to have started at the peak of the world and flowed to every corner of our lives. A young man can be sitting on a Subway train in New York reading a self-help book or science fiction story that uses ideas that started life in the Himalayas and have been passed from hand to hand till they settle in his imagination.
The cover look longer than I expected to make. I came in with an idea fully formed in my head that I set to making as close as I could. As can happen, my imagination had used an image I could see but really intended that I do something rather different. This is what kept pushing its way out. In the end I thought; I’ll just do this so I can get on with the job at hand. As soon as I had the layout nearly completed I knew this was the real cover. Lesson here is not to fight what the unconscious already knows.
Either way you may ignore my reasons and simply listen:
“super smooth, beautiful, just after a few seconds. peaceful” Holly.
“This is very relaxing. It takes you somewhere far away.
You’ve created a lush beautiful soundscape Benedict.” Ed
“Wow! Very, very nice. It’s fantastic meditation music” lvuman