Lift

Lift is the latest album by William (Bill) Gamble, a classically trained composer, performer, poet, singer/songwriter. For Lift, Bill wrote, arranged and performed all songs, in styles ranging from cowboy crooning to art songs about animals. The album was recorded and mixed primarily at Waterbury Studios in Minneapolis, as hi-fi analog as possible (SSL board run by a 1984 floppy, Avalon, Telefunken ELA M 251), engineered by the awesome and inimitable Tom Tucker. Piano tracks were recorded at Steven C Music in a lovely Italienate villa on a Bösendorfer Model 275. The simplicity of one performer was a wonderful opportunity to focus on a hi-fi and natural sound, which is evident throughout the album. The unifying theme has to do with quantum physics, in particular the approach to observation (and life) studied by Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Bohr yet initially broached by Goethe in his Color Theory - thus the songs about the moon! And the music? The songs veer in the manner of an exciting trip through a variety of styles and scenery, but they are all driven by a love of poetry and of emotional melodies combined with complex harmonic undertones. There are love songs, and social justice songs, protest songs, and good old ones about traveling and coming home. Guitar, ukelele, piano, voice, and words. Lift.