You’ve brushed the sand from your toes and you’re lying on a sun lounger with the waves lapping at the shore a few feet away. The sun is beating down, you’ve closed your eyes, and your body is gradually relaxing.

Now, add some chilled music with soaring harmonies, ethereal vocals, and a gentle beat to slow your heart rate and soothe your soul.

That – right there – is the vibe we wanted to create with desire path music; the mood, the feeling, the sensations.

Timed to perfection

Challenge number two – thanks to my friend Jules – was to produce and release an album of original music.

OK, so I had a head start with this one, but my 50 challenges initiative was the perfect springboard for releasing some music I’ve been working on for several years with engineer/producer Richard Bignell.

I’ve known Rich for ten or eleven years; he’s the kindest, most patient and supportive studio sound engineer and producer I’ve ever worked with. He also works incredibly fast, producing a superior quality output with no fuss and maximum efficiency.

I hired Rich and his studio for a couple of hours back in 2014 to play around with experimental vocals on some tracks produced by Garrett Wickman, a California-based composer of TV and film soundtracks. (You can listen to them here.) We had such fun improvising and messing about that we decided to get together in the studio to begin developing our own tracks from scratch. We discovered a mutual appreciation for ambient/chill-out music and thought we’d see what we could create.

Fast forward to the summer of 2018, and we acknowledged we had ten finished tracks that were really fun to listen to as a body of work. In other words, we’d made an album’s worth of music!

It then took us a further three years to get them to the point of release. I believe that everything happens for a reason, and only when the time is right. Jules is the reason I know Rich in the first place, so it was apt that she should set me this challenge and that we release the album now as part of this initiative.

So, here we are; we’ve done it! Astralize by desire path is out now! Please take a listen on Spotify or Apple Music. And read more about us and our music on our website.

Everyone loves a party

We celebrated the launch with a gathering of invited guests. I had intended an evening basking in the sun on a gorgeous riverside terrace, where our album would be on loop in the most perfect setting. Sadly, the British weather had other ideas so we had to relocate inside. We did, however, make the most of a break in the showers and grab some pics on the terrace.

I’m thrilled to say that Lucy Haines, the Regional Fundraising Officer for Alzheimer’s Research UK, attended the launch event, so we got her involved for some photos, too.

Thank you

Thanks, Rich, you’re the best collaborator I could have wished for. Now, can we have some fun and get cracking on the next album, please?

If you’d like to set me a challenge, please check out my JustGiving page here, and make a donation.

Thanks for following my journey.