Walking Around by wilk [will kyriazis] & nature's neighbor

released February 22, 2022

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Once day back in 2018 when I was recording Ur with Seth at Pallet Sound, the door opened and a guy named Will walked in. Seth had told me that someone was coming to repair the Fender Rhodes and so it was not a complete surprise to see him. I was however, surprised by how immediately friendly Will was despite never having previously met me. He quickly fixed the Rhodes and hung out with us in the control room while we played him some of the mixes we were working on and chatted about music we both were into. When it came time for him to leave and for Seth and I to get back to work he gave me a big hug and expressed interest in working together sometime. I must have made a remark to Seth about how nice he was because I remember Seth saying something like “Yeah man, he’s also the best pianist I’ve ever met.”

After getting back home from the studio, I watched the Pallet Sessions video Will had recorded for the Puddle Splashers YouTube channel in which he performed his piano instrumental ‘Arctic Fox’ and I was totally blown away by his virtuosity and by the beauty of the composition. I then downloaded his 2017 piano instrumental album ‘Set Adrift’ and immediately fell in love with the music. I knew then that if I ever formed a new lineup for Nature’s Neighbor that I would need him on keyboards.

About a year and a half later I had made plans to record two tracks from my album ‘Wind City Airport’ on a Pallet video session and that meant that I would need to form a new live band. I called Will and we found a day to meet up and talk about it. I met him downtown at the school he taught piano lessons at and we then drove over to Pilsen to get some tacos at Los Comales and discussed the details. He was again very enthusiastic and after a few rehearsals we successfully filmed those two songs at Pallet.

When I sat down to watch the videos, my favorite part of the whole thing was easily watching Will play. He played down some of the most incredible layers and his performance was totally engrossing. After that video session we both knew that we would need to record some music together but we didn’t know what it would sound like or how we would go about doing it.

Then the pandemic hit and everything screeched to a halt. Everything except the endless amount of DIY music that seemed to be exploding onto streaming sites like Bandcamp. I quickly noticed that Will was frequently releasing some incredible ambient music onto his Bandcamp page and I became addicted to his albums like Music For Quiet Spaces and Window. I would listen to those albums when I went on long drives around the city and his music became part of my soundtrack of 2020. After listening to Window for probably the 50th time, I finally decided to reach out to Will and tell him how much I loved it. He had been hitting me up through instagram with propositions of creating music together and after a little back and forth we finally decided to make a full length album together. This concept eventually evolved into Walking Around.

I had just finished recording Otherside with Terrill and was ready to start a project that felt completely different. So in December of 2020 I recorded the guitar parts for the title track and sent them over to Will. Within a day or two Will sent me back this incredibly beautiful track that he had crafted from the fragments I had sent him a few days earlier and it was then that I knew we had stumbled upon something very special. We then began sending tracks back and forth until we had amassed about 4 tracks. It was at that point that I suggested to will that we bring Terrill on board. Will made a leap of faith when he agreed to bring Terrill on, a person who he had never met previously and whose music he was not familiar with. But will trusted me and when Terrill entered into the project it quickly became obvious that the three of us had a very unique chemistry. We were making an incredible album and we knew it.

Writing music long distance style with these two incredible musicians was one of the highlights of my entire songwriting career and it really helped me get through the end of 2020 with a smile on my face. The album we ended up with is probably the most ambient collection of songs that I have every worked on and I absolutely love the entire album from start to finish. It really is something special. We created vast musical landscapes that you can easily lose yourself in and the whole album will take you on a journey that leaves you feeling transported by the time it is finished. We hope that you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed the process of creating it.
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