The Front Porch of Heaven

by Kevin Keller

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mark smith What a great album. Most tracks are structured around tinkling piano arpeggios and have a kind of floating, ethereal feel to them. There are no fillers and every note, every sound feels 'right'. Try the last track for example. Close Encounters was based on 5 notes but Kevin Keller structures a beautiful track from four. Solo piano at first but then continued repetitions with more sounds added each time as it builds to a lush crescendo until finally fading away as solo piano again. So addictive. Favorite track: Solana.

Joe de Larios This suite is infused with grace and energy. It evokes transcendence. Magnificent.

cyrilis Just wow ....! The album just entered the room during morning hours, as a strong light beam: it's magic really! Well chosen themes and instruments, blended together as meant to be. Bravo Kevin! ~TC

Martin Bailey - Power Escape/Hologrambient thumbnail

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Full Digital Discography

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Evensong, ambient chamber music, Shimmer, The Front Porch of Heaven, Ice Worlds, Corridors - Music for Modern Dance Vol. 3, Intermezzo (Platinum Edition), La Strada, and 11 more. , and , .
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1.	Beacon 07:09	buy track
2.	The Forgotten Places 05:43	buy track
3.	Just Over the Ridge 07:20	buy track
4.	Into the Light 06:43	buy track
5.	The Sky Below 05:48	buy track
6.	Solana 05:38	buy track

about

The title of Kevin Keller’s latest album sounds like a Clifford Simak novel. Comforting but mysterious. Homespun yet majestic. Inspired by Keller’s recent heart surgery, which included being on life support while having his heart deliberately stopped during the operation, the music seems made to soothe us in our moments of anxiety even as it explores that anxiety. The occasionally sinister moods remind us of our mortality, like the opening track “Beacon” – though, as that title suggests, a light comes to guide us through the tensions.

This is classic ambient, in many ways: the mix of acoustic piano (with that Budd-esque halo around its tones), lush strings and synthesizers. But it is also modern in its resolute pulsations. Keller, as has often been the case in his long career, usually defines the rhythm not with drums but with instrumental patterns. This is music of loops, but organic loops – and as those loops are stacked one over another to increase the music’s density, gorgeous slow melodies float above them, as on the second track, “The Forgotten Places.”

There are hints of rock music in “Just Over the Ridge”, with a run time of over 7 minutes and multiple sections that play out almost like an “ambient Bohemian Rhapsody”. As for its imagery, Keller says, “I once imagined running up a hill, and then jumping off to soar into the sky, the vast Universe stretched out all around me.” In total contrast, the album’s centerpiece “Into the Light” evokes the timelessness and weightlessness of space, all ethereal long tones – the music of the spheres. There is a sense of the profound here, evoking the light seen by survivors of near-death experiences.

“The Sky Below” brings back the ambient rock sensibility, with guitar twanging resonantly in the center of the piece. Inspired by a boyhood daydream “from many years ago,” Keller explains, “while lying under a tree and craning my neck in such a way that the sky appeared to be below me, and the Earth above.” There are even some backwards tape effects to further heighten the sense of looking back, even as the music continues moving forward, rising ever higher above the sky.

The final track is “Solana”, a Spanish word for the “sunny side” of a mountain. “It’s about returning home, to the place of our origin – more of a spiritual place than a physical one,” Keller states. The music reaches a surprising climax as the rhythm gently percolates for a while, then builds as more sounds and beats are layered on, peaking in ecstasy before a quick fade and a stripping down to piano and a quiet drone. Here is peace. Is it Heaven? Perhaps not exactly. As Keller explains it, “the front porch of heaven is a place where you can view your life from a distance before returning to it - a place of light and warmth and safety.”

credits

released September 18, 2020

Composed and produced by Kevin Keller

Recorded and mixed at Cloud City NYC
Mastered by Chris Frasco in Nashville, TN

Cover photo by Tawan Chaisom
Artist Photo by Jordan Matter

Huge thanks to London Contemporary Orchestra, Spitfire Audio, Vienna Instruments, Quantum Leap, 8dio, Serum, Omnisphere, Arturia, Roland, Konkrete, Native Instruments, MOTU, and the dry wild oat grass of Wildcat Canyon

Special thanks to all my fans, friends, and family; to Katherine Keil, M.D.; to Jessica Pena, M.D., Christopher Lau, M.D., and the staff of Weill Cornell Medical Center

Album Supporters: Gene and Kathy Keller, Derik Stone, Meri Tepper, Dawn Daehn, Marta Karamuz, John Lloyd, Ben Glovinsky, Joshua French, Steven Ornish, Orin Kurtz, Garen Horst, Daniel Leafe, Debbie Khumayyis, Jen Stencel, Ian Jones, Jeff Sloane, Rachel Amov, Tina Guerra, Eric Johnson, Frederick Key Smith, Dianna Cuatto, Jay Cathcart, Charlie Blasberg, Steve Holtje, Thomas Zarnek, Brad Grimm, Justin Latham, Paul Rafanello, Ray Sullivan, Chad Levy, Amy Marshall, Tomm Roland, Matthew Ragusa, Jeff Menager, Mark Steensland, Bill Merrill, John Bacsa, Meena Cho, Kenneth Corrales

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about

Kevin Keller New York, New York

Kevin Keller is an American composer who has worked in the spaces between neo-classical, ambient, and electronic music for over 30 years.

Often combining acoustic piano, strings, and woodwinds with electronic instruments and effects, his style has come to be called “ambient chamber music”. ... more

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