I did not set out to make this “Time’s Cartographer” album but am so grateful to have been able to do so. It happened as a beautiful accident (“O, Happy Chance!”), a sort of gift. // I have been obsessed with time, maps (quite the marriage of form, function, and artistry), and cartography and the tools and allegories associated with them for as long as I can remember (how like a compass and clock, the moon and globe do appear). The former governs everything we mortals do and don’t do (there’s a reason I chose “kairos” -- sacred and nonlinear time, an auspicious moment -- for the record label); the latter are quite fantastical (along with their demarcation of the unknown as “Here be Dragons”) holding so much promise of adventure, odyssey, and discovery...
These songs are nearly all new and draw from Greco-Roman, Biblical, Celtic, Norse, Chinese, Japanese, Slavic, and Inuit mythology as well as Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romantic imagery and Homer’s works and the Arthurian Legends (two true forever favorites), using aspects of the lore to share original insights via musical fable form. This is a concept album, a closed system in which the songs speak to and refer to each other (e.g., “Beneath the Willow Tree” and “The North Wind”, “Lighthouse Keeper” and “And Yonder is the Moon”, “Kairos” and “King Once and Future” and “The Wild, Craggy Peaks of Forever”, “Bluebird” and “Peregrine’s Secret Compass”, etc.). As ever, numerology and sequence matter, so please listen straight through and in order if you can (it’s 47 minutes and 47 seconds).
All of them but the “Bluebird” (yes, that storied one) came to me in a magical rush from July to December 2023, after releasing the last of my Bardic Tetralogy albums (“Awen”) rereading and doing The Artist’s Way, traveling, and then holing up in a house-sitting circumstance I gleefully took as a musical writing retreat opportunity and for which I am grateful. “Hares on the Mountain” is a traditional British folk song I discovered this fall and on which I changed some of the lyrics and corresponding message (though I did release a faithful version as well).“Thy Branches in December” uses my melody to words by John Keats (from his poem, “In Drear-Nighted December”), but the others use my music and lyrics.
This collection includes my first overtly political song in response and in an attempt to make some sense of the senseless news I have read, heard about, and felt so personally of late. There are allusions to Moses Maimonides, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Robert Graves, Joan Didion, and Theodore Roethke, and the to- me beloved mythical figures of Deborah, Miriam, Cassandra, and the Peregrine (as in the pilgrim and the falcon) -- very important ones in my life, identity and imagination. Gavin Lurssen remastered track 1 in 2025. I made every other part of this album -- the composing, writing, singing, playing of piano, harp, mandolin, guitar, drum, synthesizers, recording, producing, mixing, mastering, photographing, researching, drawing, and design -- and I did so with an earnest love for the creation and joy in the craft. I hope that love and joy and the care taken all come through and that you enjoy traveling with me through time and space, story and imagination, Your fellow seeker and scholar, wonderer and wanderer, weaver and bard, a Cartographer of Time
~ Deborah Stokol | Kairos Records | January 2024 Full Moon
This download includes fifteen music files, the album cover, a track list, and the liner notes.
I did not set out to make this “Time’s Cartographer” album but am so grateful to have been able to do so. It happened as a beautiful accident (“O, Happy Chance!”), a sort of gift. // I have been obsessed with time, maps (quite the marriage of form, function, and artistry), and cartography and the tools and allegories associated with them for as long as I can remember (how like a compass and clock, the moon and globe do appear). The former governs everything we mortals do and don’t do (there’s a reason I chose “kairos” -- sacred and nonlinear time, an auspicious moment -- for the record label); the latter are quite fantastical (along with their demarcation of the unknown as “Here be Dragons”) holding so much promise of adventure, odyssey, and discovery...
These songs are nearly all new and draw from Greco-Roman, Biblical, Celtic, Norse, Chinese, Japanese, Slavic, and Inuit mythology as well as Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romantic imagery and Homer’s works and the Arthurian Legends (two true forever favorites), using aspects of the lore to share original insights via musical fable form. This is a concept album, a closed system in which the songs speak to and refer to each other (e.g., “Beneath the Willow Tree” and “The North Wind”, “Lighthouse Keeper” and “And Yonder is the Moon”, “Kairos” and “King Once and Future” and “The Wild, Craggy Peaks of Forever”, “Bluebird” and “Peregrine’s Secret Compass”, etc.). As ever, numerology and sequence matter, so please listen straight through and in order if you can (it’s 47 minutes and 47 seconds).
All of them but the “Bluebird” (yes, that storied one) came to me in a magical rush from July to December 2023, after releasing the last of my Bardic Tetralogy albums (“Awen”) rereading and doing The Artist’s Way, traveling, and then holing up in a house-sitting circumstance I gleefully took as a musical writing retreat opportunity and for which I am grateful. “Hares on the Mountain” is a traditional British folk song I discovered this fall and on which I changed some of the lyrics and corresponding message (though I did release a faithful version as well).“Thy Branches in December” uses my melody to words by John Keats (from his poem, “In Drear-Nighted December”), but the others use my music and lyrics.
This collection includes my first overtly political song in response and in an attempt to make some sense of the senseless news I have read, heard about, and felt so personally of late. There are allusions to Moses Maimonides, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Robert Graves, Joan Didion, and Theodore Roethke, and the to- me beloved mythical figures of Deborah, Miriam, Cassandra, and the Peregrine (as in the pilgrim and the falcon) -- very important ones in my life, identity and imagination. Gavin Lurssen remastered track 1 in 2025. I made every other part of this album -- the composing, writing, singing, playing of piano, harp, mandolin, guitar, drum, synthesizers, recording, producing, mixing, mastering, photographing, researching, drawing, and design -- and I did so with an earnest love for the creation and joy in the craft. I hope that love and joy and the care taken all come through and that you enjoy traveling with me through time and space, story and imagination, Your fellow seeker and scholar, wonderer and wanderer, weaver and bard, a Cartographer of Time
~ Deborah Stokol | Kairos Records | January 2024 Full Moon
This download includes fifteen music files, the album cover, a track list, and the liner notes.
