Rob Hope

When I went to write my 4th album, I gave myself permission to not do another story driven or movie soundtrack style concept. Instead, I chose to compose homages, or odes, to various feelings or concepts or items in my life, allowing the emotional center that is me to drive the music rather than trying to tell a story.

I stripped away a lot of the musical complexity except where it made sense, such as in On A Failure To Dance, which is in the undanceable time signature of 33/8. I also stripped away the need for themes that carried over from song to song, or other connective tissue within the overall album.

The result is a dearly felt, but at times disconnected release that feels stronger overall than the Phoenix Diaries, but at times is almost too simple. That said, there are a lot of gems on this album and I’m happy with how it turned out.

You can learn more about The Odeon here.

Available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and Amazon Music.

After the release of the Zombie Chronicles, I felt excited about my development as a composer and the opportunities that digital recording presented me to continue to bring the music in my head to reality. I struggled with what to do next thematically; any “story” I could think of seemed to mirror my previous two concepts too closely. After catching some Harry Potter movies late one night while channel surfing, I chose to concentrate my thoughts on what the life cycle of a Phoenix might look like. While not as fully fleshed out or exciting as other ideas, it gave me basic structure and song titles to work backwards from.

The album has grown on me over the years. It is more experimental and progressive, as I applied more learnings from my research. From song to song, I think the album is stronger, but thematically it definitely suffers from a lack of vision. My desire to maintain my “18 songs pre album” standard also put me in a spot where I felt I may have included or written tracks based on that principle alone.

That said, some of my favorite work writing wise is on this album, including Dawn, How Shall I Save Your Soul and The Calm Before.

You can learn more here about this work.

Available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and Amazon Music.

In 2020, after recording and releasing my first instrumental work, I was looking for what to do next with my newfound knowledge. I had been researching music theory online, but I work best when I have a strong idea to work backwards from. My eldest son was into writing, something I had also done in my youth, and was working on something he called the Zombie Chronicles, a lengthy story with his sister and cousins as characters. One night at dinner I looked at him and said out loud that I would write a soundtrack for the film if it was ever released. I’m not sure he necessarily liked the idea.

I, on the other hand, now had a story to work with, and structure to follow. In addition, I wanted to model that sometimes you can take a personal creative project, conceive it, execute it, and publish it, for no other reason than you are excited and happy to do the work.

I wrote this quickly; the speed with which I work is always an indicator of how strong my idea is or how much clarity I have with my goal. I wrote, recorded, and released the Zombie Chronicles in roughly 5 months, by far the shortest time it’s taken me to execute a concept.

You can learn more here about this work.

Available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and Amazon Music.