I recently reviewed In Time, the fifth studio album by Cornish outfit, The Emerald Dawn. Following this, the band consisting of Tree Stewart, Ally Carter, Tom Jackson, and David Greenaway very kindly agreed to undertake a detailed and intimate interview with this website.

The detail each goes into blesses this website and you, the reader.

The band will shortly be starting a crowd-funding project for a vinyl release through the newly formed Wild Thyme Records in collaboration with Fairsound. CDs and digital downloads can be pre-ordered from 4th August, and the official CD release will be 23rd September. There will also be a single released on 1st September to help promote the album. I urge all readers of this interview to pre-order the vinyl as soon as the crowdfunding goes live, and pre-ordering the CD on either 4th August or 1st September from Bandcamp.

Tree Stewart

Thanks very much all of you for agreeing to this interview. As is usual with this website, we start with the new, and move on to the old and sometimes personal! 

So, 2023 will see the release of In Time, your fifth studio album. As my review stated, it is sweeping, panoramic, ambitious, and modern. You must be extremely proud of this release.

DAVID: Yes, as it does have a well-balanced feel. The songs all seem to complement each other, and the blend of atmospheres works well. Also, some of the ideas used are a progression from the previous albums, it is good to still be inspired and incorporate new ideas.

TREE: Thank you so much for your review, we appreciate the time you have taken to really understand the music. We are all proud of this release, it has a bit of all of us in it. 

TOM:  That’s very kind of you, thank you. I hope everyone else enjoys it just as much!

ALLY: Thanks, Steve. Yes, we’re fairly pleased with this one. 

Time. My readers would appreciate a detailed discussion about the central themes from the songs.

DAVID: Time is everywhere but seldom observed or noticed and yet remains an unstoppable force. It appears to move at different rates as our lives progress and even varies with our present situations. It is in some way elastic.

TREE: ‘Out of Time’ – When a moment is so beautiful you want it to last forever and what might happen if it did.

‘Timeless’ – Our subjective experiences of time are every different, times elasticity in those moments suggest timelessness. 

‘March of Time’ – The inevitable march of time towards our deaths is always there, relentlessly marching in the background to our other experiences in life. 

I find Ouroboros Affronted particularly fascinating, the serpent eternally chasing its tail. When I was younger, I dwelt almost obsessively about the concept of personal mortality and the end of being for eternity, but as I have grown older, I find myself less “bothered” about this and more comfortable with simply living in the moment – stealing a moment in time and making it last forever, as the lyrics state. A special moment can be a personal eternity and letting fate take us where she wishes. The band’s thoughts on this would be interesting.

DAVID: This could be a unique moment in life that leaves a lasting impression, an unforgettable experience, for example, or just as easily a moment that alters the direction of your life. It could also be a moment of daydreaming or contemplation in which time has been stretched and a few minutes have seemed like hours or even days.

TREE: Time, life, death, symbolism, perceptions, and the snake have been interests of mine for a long time. Most of my work when I was at Art College explored these ideas, and my final year dissertation was on the symbol of the serpent in art and religion. I have been practicing and studying Mindfulness for the past 10 years so the present moment and experiencing it fully is now very important to me. Even from a mindfulness perspective Time and our experience of it is elastic.

ALLY: ‘Out of Time’ is about a particular personal experience, which we have tried to present universally, both psychologically and mythologically. Ouroboros is a symbol of time, and it came from Egypt – the meeting point of Arabia in the Middle East and North Africa. Hence the Egyptian-, Arabian-, or Middle Eastern-, sounding central section. How might you represent moments of time being stolen? We try to do so with what we call, The Sequence, and it first appears around 3 minutes 20 seconds into the piece, and it consists of changing time signatures – 7/8, 6/8, 5/8, 4/8 – in rapid succession. In other words, a beat is progressively removed as the music moves from one bar to the next – ‘moments have been stolen’, and on first hearing it sounds disruptive. Mythologically, imagine Time personified as a speaking serpent. Imagine it waking up disturbed by moments having been stolen. Imagine a snake charmer attempting to placate it, but ultimately failing as the serpent grows in power. Now imagine Time trying to put it all back together. So, in the fourth section we return to The Sequence, but we try to make everything turn into something that feels a lot more musical. The piece moves on to a thought about how a moment could, in a manner, be stolen and made to last without causing chaos all around – namely, by holding it in one’s memory. But a lingering disruption nevertheless remains. Of course, the listener can interpret the music in any manner s/he likes.

This is not the only classical reference. We have The Eternal River and Janus Divided on Timeless, the latter being that fascinating Roman Deity who faced both ways and, amongst other things, was an immortal representation of time.

In my review, I spoke of the nightly oblivion we fall into. The doors to the Temple of Janus were only ever closed when the Republic and (later) Empire were not at war, so rarely. How does this fit within the overarching theme, please?

TREE: I did not know this about the doors to The Temple of Janus! There are many references and symbols in the album.

ALLY: ‘Timeless’ has a mirror-like structure. The first half is repeated in reverse form in the second half. From the central point of the suite, you look backwards and forwards to something that has a common form but with different details.  

The music is a band effort, whilst lyrics are shared by Ally & Tree. I am interested in the development of the work from initial ideas to finished product. Where does the inspiration come from? I assume this album was recorded with you together post-Covid? As much detail about the creative process would be fantastic, please, especially the creative role played by all of you to arrive at the finished product.

DAVID: A combination of previous ideas and new ones derived from jams in the studio or fragments of ideas pieced together to produce a completely new song. Having recorded some of these ‘rough ideas’ they can be perused and improved at rehearsals.

TREE: Ideas and inspiration come from various places. We all bring ideas to the studio not just musically but themes as well. We spend lots of time on transitions between sections to give tracks a seamless feel. We can easily be working on tracks for several albums at once until we have enough tracks for what will be the next album, and then we tend to focus on that work. To complete the process, I do all the original artwork and Ally does all the recording, mixing, mastering and artwork layouts. 

TOM: Often we will jam and try out any ideas and riffs when we meet up. When songwriting, we might try and add some of these ideas into the song. For example, the groove for the saxophone solos in Timeless came from jam sessions we had.

ALLY: Not always, but mostly, Tree comes up with the harmonic structure of the piece – the scales, the chord progressions, Tom comes up with the rhythms, David comes up with the bass melodies and I come up with the main melodies. And often we all work together on the transitions from one section to the next. It is not unusual for the transition from one section to the next to take far, far longer to get exactly how we want it than composing the various sections takes.

David Greenaway

Ally Carter

Tom Jackson

Dragon Studio, World’s End, West Penwith is the location where the album was produced and mixed. I believe this is a listed building in Cornwall, so I would like to hear about the location and what it brings to The Emerald Dawn recording and musical experience, please.

TOM:  The studio is out in the countryside away from the town, and I find it helps to be away from civilisation when it comes to creating our own songs and sounds.

DAVID: A good working environment is conducive to producing good quality products and the studio being quiet and secluded is perfect for this. It enables the music to develop organically as it were and is not rushed but manipulated into its final format.

TREE: It is not a listed building though it probably should be!  Beautiful farmhouse and small studio on the Cornish moors. Situated at the top of a hill with stunning views across the hills and to both coasts. The location brings ease of creativity and peace.

ALLY: There was a bit of a commotion outside the farmhouse one day, and a policewoman knocked on our door to ask for our address. We gave it to her, and she got on her mobile phone and said, ‘We really are in the middle of nowhere’. So, if the police can say it, then it’s official: we compose, rehearse and record in the middle of nowhere. And that is perfect for composing, rehearsing, and recording, but not so good for performing live. We’re about 16 miles from Land’s End, as the raven flies, and about 110 miles along the dreaded A30 until we hit the motorway at Exeter. And that means that most of our gigs require a three-day trip away. 

I must say that Tree’s artwork is stunning (again). Her artistic background would be interesting to learn of. Also, what comes first, the lyrics based on the art, or the art based on the lyrics (this is, of course, the chicken and egg journalistic concept beloved by writers since the dawn of time!).

TREE: Thanks so much for your kind words. I have had an obsessive love of drawing and painting since I was a child. I went to Aberdeen College to do a year foundation and portfolio course when I was 17 and then on to Edinburgh College of Art to study for 4 years eventually coming away with a degree in Fine Art and Sculpture. The art for the album always comes after the music and lyrics. The final paintings are done during the months of the recording and mixing process. 

There is a nice credit to Richard Swan – “a special thanks for more than just humping gear around”. For every special band such as you, there are remarkable people who make it happen smoothly, famously Richard MacPhail for Genesis back in the day. So, this is the band’s opportunity to put Mr. Swan in the limelight! What are his roles, please?

DAVID: There is no substitute for genuine interest in the music and Richard has this. He is also prepared to undertake any task no matter how small to help proceedings (live gigs) run smoothly. He is also good at promoting bands via his reviews etc. and makes a fabulous barbecue!

ALLY: Richard is passionate about helping emerging progressive rock bands, and he really goes well out of his way to help those bands he likes.

TREE: Richard is our hero! He has been involved with the band for several years now. He has been an amazing roadie many times, helping to move our mountains of equipment and thus making it easier to play certain gigs and festivals. He has secured gig bookings for us, and he has been an extra set of ears for listening to mixes and ideas. He is also the best drinking partner after gigs. Through all of this he has become a very good friend and we love him dearly.  

With Timeless, to begin with I got a hint of 80’s Genesis before the sax came in and blew that away. I also referred to my dislike of restrictive sub-genres when describing artists’ work. I would, though, like to hear from all of you what your influences musically and lyrically were when you started off and in 2023. What floats The Emerald Dawn boat?

DAVID: The labels put onto bands are really only for the public and change with the times reflecting the music scene. Personally, all music is an influence of one form or another. One of the aspects of The Emerald Dawn’s line up is the range of musical tastes. Lyrics are also important, hopefully to be interpreted by the listener in a variety of personal ways.

TOM:  My tastes are eclectic. Everything from The Beatles to Slipknot, from Debussy to Mongolian throat singing, and everything in between.

TREE: There is actually a boat called The Emerald Dawn! Musically our influences come from all over the place - classical, prog, fusion, jazz, world, electronica. We all love lots of styles and I think that comes into our own music.

ALLY: Regarding guitar, my influences range from Peter Green, through Carlos Santana and David Gilmour to John McLaughlin. Regarding sax, my influences are mainly Elton Dean, Jan Garbarek and John Coltrane. I still love the early mellotron-heavy King Crimson, Soft Machine of the ‘Third’ and 'Fourth’ albums period, Pink Floyd from the ‘Ummagumma’, ‘Atom Heart Mother’ and ‘Meddle’ period, and Caravan’s long compositions. But I also love Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Walton.  

Further to this, I am fascinated by the piece that David wrote on your website of the band having four players, but the fifth member being The Emerald Dawn itself, a musical shadow. I also love and endorse the concept of taking time to appreciate not just the music, but the changing moods. Dreams turned into sound and taking pleasure in the journey. This is a state of mind, a state of being, a driving force and I would love to have this expanded upon by all four of you, please.

DAVID: It is the idea that a band is a product of the musicians within it, all with their own style and input. The end result is dependent on this input, and therefore if any member is changed then the overall sound will alter in some way. The Emerald Dawn’s music is as a result of the four members all having the freedom to comment, alter and suggest ideas and changes etc. etc. with complete freedom and more importantly patience from the other three to listen and then try the alternatives.

Therefore, the end result is one of a complete artistic input thus producing The Emerald Dawn ‘sound’ which now exists in its own right and is the fifth member existing alongside the other four.

Also, part of modern life is its fast pace. In the past people had more time for simple pleasures and musical appreciation. With The Emerald Dawn music an attempt is being made to take people on a mental journey of music at the pace set by the music, not a mobile phone.

TOM: Never really thought about it like that. Our similar musical tastes and our ambitions help us create our identity, along with our separate musical influences to help keep us fresh. 

ALLY: I have always loved music that isn’t just for background listening. I especially love music that requires listening to in a dark room and which then takes you on an internal visual journey. Examples would be ‘Birdman’ by McDonald & Giles or the title-track ‘Lizard’ by King Crimson. So, I try to help make our music stimulate as much mental visions as possible and try to help make a piece grab you and take you on a journey.

TREE: I do think that when the four of us come together we create something unique. This creativity feels like it is another entity because it has a life of its own.

That there is critical acclaim for this fine album is a given. However, all of us involved in the modern progressive rock scene appreciate that the commercial picture is, to say the least, challenging. You are an independent band producing quality independent music, away from the corporate culture which I think is choking societal appreciation and, indeed, society itself. I am interested in what would qualify as a success for the band. You are not on iTunes, but people reading this can buy your works from your Bandcamp page at https://theemeralddawn.bandcamp.com/ You perform live. How do you see the economic picture and how do you overcome the challenges? What do you say to those who expect to get their music continually for next to nothing?

TOM: With the current political and economic climate, it is becoming harder and harder to sustain a living and career in music. It is thanks to those continually promoting original music, either through live shows or through radio play that makes all efforts worthwhile, to help bring like-minded folk on the scene together.

DAVID: The music business, like all businesses, is dominated by finance but unfortunately with backing comes conditions alongside the promotion. The economic picture at present appears to be poor for all enterprises. This is where the studio is invaluable as it is set up and always available without incurring costs.

Also, the pirating of music is nowadays so common as to be unstoppable and what people can get for free, they will take. The present financial environment also makes it difficult for the public to take a chance on bands they are unfamiliar with as the admission fees are prohibitive. This is why the tribute scene is flourishing.

 Further to this, can you give us a timeline, please, for the pre-release campaign and eventual formal release? How can my readers contribute to this?

ALLY:  We will shortly be starting a crowd-funding project for a vinyl release through the newly formed Wild Thyme Records in collaboration with Fairsound. CDs and digital downloads can be pre-ordered from 4th August, and the official CD release will be 23rd September. We will also be releasing a single on 1st September to help promote the album. Your readers can greatly help by pre-ordering the vinyl as soon as the crowdfunding goes live, and by pre-ordering the CD on either 4th August or 1st September from Bandcamp.

So, let’s go back in time. The beginning. Firstly, each band member’s background. As a summary, Tree is a circus performer, Tom and David full-time musicians, and Ally a scholar, writer, and environmental activist. I would like a bit more detailed pen picture from you all, please.

TREE: I spent my childhood and teenage years performing, studying dance, taking part in musicals, working with a mime artist and percussionist, and performing in duets with my music teacher. I eventually went to art college and at that time I met a number of circus performers, so I started training circus as well as getting involved in the Edinburgh Samba School and a dance music/percussion band called The Weird Attractors. When I finished my art degree, I took over a performing arts company with a group of people. We combined circus, theatre and music into shows and walkabout acts for festivals, corporate events and travelled across the UK and Europe performing. We finally set up an arts venue and one day in walked Ally... 

ALLY: I was on the Board of Directors of Friends of the Earth (England, Wales, and Northern Ireland) for nearly a decade, and on the Board of Directors of Friends of the Earth Scotland for about 3 years. I was also Chair of the World Development Movement, Scotland. That was all voluntary. I got paid for being a professor of philosophy, specialising in political, moral, and environmental philosophy. In my 20s I had the choice of being a musician or an academic. I chose academia. As I approached 60, I thought ‘enough of this’, took early retirement, and returned to my love of music, though I had never stopped playing as a hobby.

TOM: I’ve worked as a musician for nearly 20 years, having studied music at college and even obtaining a degree in Jazz. Most of my work involves teaching and performing, but with a few recording sessions thrown into the mix as well.

DAVID: Am self-taught public-school product, always loved music from early age. Initially classical music and flamenco.  Discovered rock during teenage years and fell for the feel of it. Also loved early electronic music as it was different. Became a full-time musician after dropping out of University. The learning curve I consider to be an apprenticeship having to play all forms of commercial music to earn a living. All styles have something of interest. Mainly played original music then from age 21 to 35. Very difficult to earn a living but the rewards were not financial. Moderate success. Strangely became a double bass player in comedy bands playing jive, R and R, country, etc. but toured all over the world. When that ended carried on with cover and tribute bands until joining The Emerald Dawn. 

The band was formed by Ally & Tree in 2010, I believe, in Scotland, but you moved to the beautiful county of Cornwall where you met Tom, with David joining a bit later. So, a potted history of the formation, the move, how you all met, and what clicked between you all.

TREE: Ally and I met at the venue I used to run in Edinburgh. We became friends and eventually got together as a couple. Ally played amazing guitar and although I had played organ for 10 years as a child and teenager, I had not played in 10 years. When I finally mentioned that I used to play he got a keyboard out from under the bed, and everything musically clicked from the moment we played together.  We started composing together in our tiny kitchen /diner which we turned into a studio of sorts.  When we decided to move, we explored Wales and Cornwall to see where we wanted to live. Amazingly, we met Tom on our first night in St Ives. We stayed at The Queens Hotel and as fate would have it Tom was playing in the bar with one of his bands.  We had wondered if we moved to St Ives would there be anyone we could play with. We thought Tom was a fantastic drummer and when we eventually moved to St Ives, we became friends with him and started playing together. The first album was recorded in ‘The Space’ which was an old church hall and part of the shared house Ally, and I lived in. We moved to our home in 2014 and then had Dragon Studio built. A few years later we found David and we all clicked straight away. The four of us get on really, really well. We have a love of similar things in life – like cooking, animals, nature, films, books, and most of all we all love music, exploring it, listening to it, composing it and playing it. 

TOM: It was at one of my gigs in St Ives where I met Ally and Tree, started to chat, and they mentioned their project which intrigued me. It wasn’t long after that that we started working together and eventually got our first album out.

DAVID: A common love of music and its effects.

The first studio release was Searching for the Lost Key in 2014. It was certainly a statement of intent. A debut album with four tracks all epic length – those stirring keyboards on the opener, Beyond the Wall. A song referencing a fourteenth century teacher and philosopher. Indeed, listening to it as I write these questions, it strikes me that the album was a fusion of poetry and classical church/chamber music into a modern progressive rock setting. Your collective thoughts on this debut, please.

TOM:  I still can’t believe it’s nearly been 10 years! I think we’ve come leaps and bounds from those days, not just in our song writing but also in our production and identity. I still like to revisit this album and ‘Shadow in Light’ is one of our favourites to perform live; certainly mine!

ALLY: The philosopher reference in ‘Buridan’s Lament’ is to an example used in philosophy, namely that of Buridan’s Ass. This concerns a failure to decide when there are no rational grounds for preferring any of the alternatives. Why that title? Simply because the track is about indecision.

How was the debut received, both critically but, more importantly, amongst the progressive music community in 2014?

TREE: We were not very widely known in the progressive rock community back then though there were some reviewers and radio DJ’s who have loved what we do from this first album onwards. We must thank them for championing us from this very early stage. As with all albums some people love it, and some people don’t get what we are trying to do. I think this was the case with Searching for the Lost Key and continues to be the case.

ALLY: Back then we hadn’t played outside of Cornwall (well, one gig in Plymouth, but that barely counts). Outside of a few prog internet radio DJs and their listeners, we were unknown until we first played Danfest in Leicester in 2019. 

My very good friend, Thomas Szirmay, now reviewing as The Prog Rogue, said in his review at the time of the album that “in some strange way, had this work been taken over by some high fallutin’ wiz producer like Steve Wilson, the result may have been devoid of its natural charm. This kind of dedicated and honest artist is the paragon of our genre, why we need to encourage them further and beyond the lost key”.

As is usual, I agree with his wise words. Your thoughts, please? Have you ever been tempted to have production carried out beyond the band?

DAVID: Modern production techniques used in the big studios seem to rely heavily on compression and clarity to produce a popular sound. Whilst this is obviously using up-to-date technology, with the latest sound cards a lot of music ends up sounding dynamically the same. With The Emerald Dawn albums may not be up to the latest production standards but the recordings do allow for the atmosphere and ‘feel’ of the music to remain. The dynamics within the music are important, it is essentially about capturing a good ‘take’ of the piece, even keeping some minor mistakes keeping the music human and not digitally perfect.

TOM:  The advantage of doing everything “in house”, aside from keeping costs down, is making sure we get the sound we want, and to take as much time as needed to achieve it.

TREE: We like having full artistic control and we know that if we give our work to anyone else then we will have lost creative control. We have a vision, and this would probably not be shared by an outside producer.   

I have embedded the instrumental Shadow in Light below for my readers. It is magnificent and, I find, multilayered with the electric guitars, especially, moving darkly in the undergrowth beneath the lighter synths layered above on the ground, with a pulsing rhythm section in between before the keys themselves take a bleak dystopian turn. Following this, there is the most delightful bass harmony and a more pastoral feel to proceedings. Talk us through this track, please.

TREE: This track is about the light that can be found inside every shadow and the shadow that can be found in every bit of light. One does not exist without the other. Life throws us moments of light and moments of dark, sometimes both at the same time. I absolutely LOVE playing this track live, it seems to have a life of its own on the stage!

TOM: This is one of my favourite tracks to perform. The original album version sounds so tame in comparison to now, as we have evolved the track playing it live over the years. Also having David on bass has changed the feel and dynamic of the track for the better!

ALLY: I should add that the ‘layering’ is there when we play live, and we never play to a backing track. Our philosophy to date has been that we won’t release something that we cannot play live just as it is on the recording. A lot of preparatory work is done by Tree in getting the sounds as they are. When she hits a note on her keyboard, there will be a number of instrument sounds playing that note and panned so as to sound distinct. I also spend quite a bit of time getting the guitar sound I want for each part of a track, and David does the same with his bass.

It was to be three years before you followed up with your sophomore album, Visions. Musique Noire, the opening track is twenty minutes plus, so, again, you were not short of intentions!

This strikes me as a statement about a growing and stirring movement to protect our planet and the need to nurture it, with mankind spending too many years losing direction and falling in line (and I agree. I boggle sometimes at the inherent greed within commercials on television & radio for products which are known to cause immense environmental and health damage by rapacious corporates). Talk us through this, please.

ALLY: That is exactly right. ‘Musique Noire’ is a depiction of what it has felt like to be part of a radical environmentalist movement over the past 50+ years. In the late 1960s there was a huge increase in interest in environmental issues, but this fell away especially at the time of the first Gulf War. The track is something of a clarion call to get involved in environmental actions. Not as a result of this track, of course, but it is interesting to note that Extinction Rebellion came to prominence not long after (and I should add that I haven’t always found all their tactics well thought through).

The sax on all albums is a smoky, tuneful delight, which I think brings so much texture to the work. Your playing reminds me so strongly of David Jackson, and by that, I do not mean in a plagiarist sense, but that very clever knack of bringing deep emotion and feeling to the instrument and adding musical value to the scene being portrayed.

ALLY: I did see David Jackson on the ‘Six Bob Tour’ back in 1971. But as I mentioned earlier, I’m much more influenced by Elton Dean and Jan Garbarek.

The album is a definite progression on the original. I think that grandiose is an apt word. I know that you all deliberately want each album to have a different feel at the least to its predecessors, and this reminds me of something Mike Rutherford said many years ago about the drive he and his bandmates had to create something new with each work because you were only as good as your last work and staleness led to artistic indifference. I agree with this, and I am sure you all do?

DAVID: Yes, I do agree with that statement. It is a balance of bringing in new ideas and sounds whilst being careful to maintain the band sound. Fortunately, the band is not short of ideas and has plenty more still to offer.

TREE: We like to explore different themes, feels, styles, ideas, and emotions. If we just kept repeating ourselves then we would not be fully embracing the new, the progress, the change. 

ALLY: We think of ourselves as part of a progressive movement in music. There has been a lot of debate as to what that means. For some people, it is moving music forwards. For others, it is sounding like the earlier prog rock bands. For the latter, if you were to produce the album Genesis might have made had Peter Gabriel not left in 1975 then you have achieved musical perfection. We try to accommodate both sides to some degree. We want our music to harken back in some way to the greats of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s – we want it to be a development of that style of music rather than a development of Country and Western, say – but we aren’t content if we aren’t doing something original, whether in virtue of the rhythms, the scales, the harmonic structure, the parts of the compositions or the transitions between those parts. If you are continually trying to move music forward in some small or, even better, large way, then your albums shouldn’t sound the same. If they do, you have stopped moving forward. You have stopped progressing. 

Further to this, how does the band come together to create a final project from the initial idea and writing stage?

TOM:  Ally and Tree will often have the concept of what the focus of the album will be. After that, we all are involved in how the album is produced, from song order to mixing to instrumentation and so on.

DAVID: Working on the various current pieces in the studio until satisfied with the end product, as in the arrangement instrumentation etc. Then combining those tunes that work well together.

TREE: Ideas are either brought to the studio by someone and explored by the band or created from spontaneous jams that we like. Later, when we start to get a structure then sometimes a section is written for a purpose to further a theme or part of the story. A final track is usually a combination of these ways of working. We work hard on transitions between sections and the sounds used. We like to try playing all ideas so that ideas are not just in our heads. We are usually in agreement once we have played something.

ALLY: Yes, we discovered long ago that the quickest way to get agreement by everyone is to play the various ideas that arise before casting judgement. It is usually fairly obvious what works well and what doesn’t once you have tried it.

I have embedded another instrumental below, namely Stranger in a Strange Land. It is a very good piece of music. I am curious, though; does it take its inspiration from the Robert A Heinlein novel? If so, what about that fascinating work brought the idea, and, if not, what is its inspiration? It certainly does have a futuristic vibe to it.

TREE: No, it does not take inspiration from that novel. The track is about being left in a world devastated by human destruction.

TOM:  I was listening to a lot of industrial metal at the time, such as Fear Factory. With the thumping bass part and the guitar riff in three, I thought it would be neat to have a repeated machine-like pattern play over in four to create a overlapping feel.

ALLY: We had hoped that ‘Visions’, our second album, would come out on vinyl. There wouldn’t have been a Side A and a Side B, but instead an ‘Upside’ and a ‘Downside’. The Upside was to consist of a vision of hope, and that is there in ‘Musique Noire’, and the Downside was a contrasting vision of a future where the call to action in the Upside goes unheeded. ‘Waves’ is a song about how the world, or at least the world as we know it, might well end: with rising sea levels. The track that follows, which is the last track on the album, namely ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’, is a post-apocalyptic vision. It can be interpreted however the listener likes, but to me it is in four parts. The first is coastal, perhaps what little is left after the world as we know it has ended. The second is a little further inland, with some remnants of industry left – perhaps you might think of Mad Max! The third is the wasteland of the interior. None any longer provides a home for humanity. The final section is an elegy to a species that had such incredible potential but will probably end up destroying itself and everything around it through living within social structures that encourage selfishness and competition rather than genuine co-operation and caring both for each other and for the environment.

Nocturne was released in 2019. By this time, I notice that the number of reviews your albums were attracting had increased, so you had a greater reach. I think the review in The Progressive Aspect was a particularly good writeup. Talk us through the process of a band such as The Emerald Dawn promoting its music and live shows and the challenges faced. I think it might be interesting if I put up my own website as an example of something I am extremely proud of but recognise that it is quite niche and never going to attract numbers such as, for example, The NME or Classic Rock from Loudersound, and this is the case with similar websites. How does the band reach out beyond online products such as mine and TPA? Do you particularly want to?

TREE: It is difficult for bands like us to promote and reach beyond small websites and radio shows. We really appreciate all the work that small websites and radio shows have done for us. Although we use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, it is not easy to reach lots of people in an age where there is a lack of focus and a seeming lack of interest in music. Playing live outside of Cornwall is what really brought us some recognition and a good reputation for exciting, live performances. Another thing that helped was appearing in Prog Magazine in their Readers Poll Top Ten Best Unsigned Bands in both 2021 and 2022, and a two-page article about us releasing the vinyl of ‘To Touch the Sky’.

How did you all feel about the project at this stage of its development?

TREE: Excited! I cannot explain how or what it feels like to play and compose with these guys. It was brilliant to finally have David on board as part of the creative process, as well as bringing a totally new dimension to the sound. With ‘Nocturne’ and David joining everything really started to click.

TOM:  It’s very exciting and I’m even more excited about how much further we can take it!

Nocturne was recommended to listeners to be enjoyed alone and in the dark. It is certainly heavier in its execution in parts than its predecessors, and I have embedded the wonderful instrumental As Darkness Falls as an example of this – the first three minutes are a rock out, and then the nighttime takes over, and you can palpably feel the winter shadows closing in. Listening to the album now, I think it is a massive leap forward, certainly in its production. A fair observation?

DAVID: I am not sure about a leap forward in production but the song writing processes seem to have become more refined by this time.

TREE: ‘Nocturne’ was the first album where we really had all the band involved in the writing process. As the tracks are about the night and all that we can experience in it the album is heavier and darker in feel. I think each album progresses slightly in terms of production because we are getting more experienced with recording, mixing, and mastering.

ALLY: As I mentioned earlier, I love music that is best heard sitting in the dark and giving the music your full attention, and then seeing where the music takes you. As this is an album about the night, it seemed a good opportunity to try to get other people on board with that way of listening to music. It is a different kind of experience. Some people just want music to provide some background entertainment while they focus on something else, say cook. Others want it to stimulate dancing at parties. These are perfectly legitimate uses of music. But there is also a kind of music that is more like watching an art movie: music that is there to move you, to take you on a journey, to give you experiences you can’t ordinarily have. That requires giving yourself fully to the music, and I find that easiest in the dark. A central theme of ‘Nocturne’ is that things aren’t always as they appear. This is perhaps more obviously so in poor light. Part of the choice in production was therefore to make things sometimes less clear. Also, there are not only dark moments when we are in the pitch black but also slightly clearer moments, say when the moon has just come out from behind a thick cloud.

I am a summer and warmth person personally. I dislike the wet and windy winter weather in West Wales, but there is something beautiful and life affirming about a clear and crisp winter’s evening bathed in the moonlight surrounded by hills and trees. The track Moonlight, which I have also embedded below, brings this to life in a manner I deeply admire. The piano, fantastic guitar riffs, the organ, and a rhythm section underpinning this with some lush bass melodies and intricate percussion. Was this born out of an Emerald Dawn studio riff, or something a little more detailed brought to the studio by one of you?

DAVID: This is a piece more centred around the piano and developed as an instrumental.

TREE: The piano part was something I wrote when I was a teenager when I was trying to think about Moonlight Sonata – obviously what I wrote is nothing like Moonlight Sonata, but this little bit of composition stayed with me for years until one day Ally jammed some guitar over it. It eventually expanded as we jammed and added sections that we thought evoked the sound of a demon.

And so, we come to 2021 and To Touch the Sky. Before discussing a fine album, itself, this was, of course, the craziest time any of us as adults can remember with lockdown and the whole pandemic situation. Recording an ambitious work such as this can never be described as easy, but this one must have been especially challenging. Looking back on this period, how do you all feel now, both in terms of the recording, but also socially knowing what we do now about the parties and other high-level shenanigans which went on?

DAVID: The band was lucky in that the studio was our place of work and therefore working throughout Covid was not a problem. As for the high-level corruption, etc., that is nothing new and unfortunately will be with us in the future. No surprises there.

TREE: We declared our studio a place of work with full risk assessments, so we are really lucky that we could work together unlike so many bands. It still feels a bit unreal that we went through all of that. I am still horrified at the division in society between those who madly thought that something this serious was a hoax, those who took it very seriously and those who partied regardless. I am happy that we could produce a work during that time that we think was worthwhile.

I embedded a video of you all performing the album live, and I do so again here in the hope that my readers will drop whatever it is they are doing and sit down and enjoy a stunning album in its entirety. Tell us about the gestation of the album, please, from its original concept to the recording environment.

DAVID: Perhaps more time was spent on the smaller details of composition in this case, nothing about the writing process was rushed.

TREE: All the tracks had parts that were written a long time ago and had been waiting to be developed fully. I am not sure of the exact timescale of these parts. I think Ally and I wrote the bones of The Ascent when we lived in the centre of St Ives 12 years ago, and I know at that time Tom, Ally and I played some version of ‘Transfixed’ when Ally and I lived in Penzance about 11 years ago. The final pieces changed, and bits were added or removed when brought to the studio for the four of us to work on together in 2020.

Three tracks, the shortest a mere 11:15, The Awakening. It is dramatic, operatic at times, and intense. The whole album, including voice, strikes me as a work of rock band combining their individual instruments as orchestra in that the absence of any note played by a particular instrument would be desperately missed and take away from the whole experience, a symphonic wall of sound, this encompassing the heavier passages as well. It is music to sit down to and immerse oneself in, as opposed to much throwaway culture.

That last sentence will not win me any offers of gainful employment in our ubiquitous tabloid media culture, but, in fact, I think it is that unfashionable outlook on life and music which carries a large part of the appeal. I also think that such music will, once again, become more appreciated in wider society. The Emerald Dawn – glass half full, like mine, or half empty?

TREE: Half full, but I know the whole band will not agree on this! HA HA!

ALLY: Half empty. But I’ll refrain from spoiling the party...

Hopefully the public will once again become interested in music that has more to offer than three minutes of commercial repetition. Unfortunately, with the digital world dominating public choices, people have become used to the computer picking songs for them. Again, it is sad that progressive music has such little attention from the younger generations but with optimism and a little belief one day they may become interested in more challenging tunes. 

To close this interview, once again I am extremely grateful to you all for taking the time to answer these questions. After In Time is released, where does The Emerald Dawn story go in the immediate future and more medium term?

TREE: On behalf of the whole band, thank you so much for taking such an interest in our music. We will be promoting the new album, playing the new album live at some gigs later in the year, finishing Album 6, and writing even more music!

My grateful thanks to The Emerald Dawn for taking the time to provide us with such detail of their music, lyrics, thoughts, and visions.