Night Thoughts by Jeff Pearce

The music on “Night Thoughts” comes from two digital only EPs (“Nightstream”, from 2024, and “Ethereal Night”, from 2025), plus two extra tracks recorded exclusively for this album (“By Moonlight” and “The Last Long Walk”)

Ethereal Night- a gently rhythmic, slightly lonely sounding song that came into existence after a few late night stargazing walks. As I get older, I find more and more inspiration in the night sky surrounding my home in rural Indiana. "Ethereal Night" came to be after a couple of these late night walks, during an unseasonably warm spell in early March 2025.

A Fading: This song was from my year 2000 CD “To the Shores of Heaven”, and it was nice to revisit this old friend. The slow, minor key loop invited some introspective guitar lines over the top of it . The last time I played this song was when I recorded it in late 1999, and I’m thinking that may have been a mistake; this would have been a fun song to play at any of my concerts. But there's a good chance it might show up in future shows.

Another Circle: this song (as well as “A Fading”, “Home”, and “Nightstream”) was recorded in the very late night/early morning of my birthday in 2024 (“Another Circle” as in “another circle around the sun”). The song itself started with an odd guitar tuning (for those interested: low to high- E, B, D#, G#, C#, F#) and the first version of this was an improvisation that clocked in at roughly 27 minutes. The version here is a much shorter, and more structured, version.

And You Will Never Know- it would seem pretty ironic to title a song “And You Will Never Know”, and then write a short essay on what that song is about- so I’m leaving this as-is. What I WILL say is that this song is the shortest song I’ve released in my 32+ years of sending music into the world- and over the years, I’ve become fascinated with composing both very long songs, and very short songs. Everything I needed to say, this song said in less than two minutes.

Farther: created on January 26th, 2025- the second anniversary of my father’s departure from this world (hence the title “Farther”- fairly close in spelling to “Father”, which is the kind of wordplay my dad would probably have appreciated).

Home: If we’re lucky, there’s a place that comes to mind when we hear the word “home”. In that respect, I’m very lucky, because when I hear the word “home”, two places come to mind: the place I grew up as a child, and the place where I’ve watched my children grow up. Musically, I just let this song say what it needed to say, no more and no less, and the end result surprised me; there were elements of nostalgia in the music, certainly, but there was also a touch of longing.

Shadow of Surrender- this is a re-recording of the track from my 1995 album “The Hidden Rift”. Since I started creating digital EPs in early 2021, I’ve included a song from my past catalog if it resonated with the feelings in my life at the time, and “Shadow of Surrender” fit well with these themes of late night exploration. The original track was written on a very late night in March of 1994, and was re-recorded for this EP on a late night in March of 2025.

Aurora- We were pleasantly surprised by two Aurora Borealis events recently: one in October 2024, and the other in March of 2025. “Aurora” is built around a loop of “paintbrush guitar” (strumming the strings of a guitar with a paintbrush), and features a single glissando guitar line played in real time over the top- an apt representation of the majestic beauty of the night sky (the main loop) as observed, in wonder, by one guy in the woods (the glissando line).

By Moonlight: another “beauty of the night sky” song, this time with the moon as the focus. One of the benefits of living in a very rural area are the opportunities to sit outdoors, undisturbed, and just watch the moon slowly make its way through the sky.

Nightstream: Thanks to the abundant July 2024 rains in Indiana, the stream that cuts through our property entertained ambitions of becoming a river. With this track, I wanted to capture that same feel and flow of the stream outside in music. I used the same guitar, with the same strange tuning, that I did for “Another Circle”, and I greatly enjoyed following where the music led.

The Last Long Walk: This album started with a song inspired by late night walks, and it seems fitting to end it with another a late night walk song. One of the bittersweet privileges of growing older is that i have taken a few last long walks with people who were important to me- and neither of us knew that at the time. This song is for all of them.

2X Billboard® charting ambient musician Jeff Pearce has been called “an avatar of ambient guitar” by Echoes radio host John Diliberto, and “one of the top two electronic guitarists of all time” by the AllMusic guide. Jeff has quietly and consistently pioneered his ethereal style of ambient guitar since his first CD release in 1993.

jeffpearcemusic.com
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