WHAT THIS IS:

Current EVENTS is an 8 song collection of ambient instrumentals by Matthew Ryan. It's available DIGITALLY via www.matthewryanonline.com and Bandcamp (Update as of 9.24.20: I'll be releasing an abridged version Current EVENTS on 10.9.20 via the streaming and digital sites: Apple, Spotify, Google Play and so on).

If you love it, please share news of its release. This was a labor of love.

Current EVENTS is a minimalist collection of instrumentals, no voice or lyric. These are chords and notes and sound with a purposeful depth of field and primal melodies, and mood. Essentially, they are tone poems. Some are quietly noisy, others are beautiful and brief. All are ambient, intimate and environmental feeling (by environmental I mean that they should participate in your surroundings, their intent is not to dominate your thoughts or surroundings). Each one took hours to perfect, even the shorter pieces. Tone and feel were paramount, I was looking for a very specific air. Each "song" flows from one to the next, not unlike a straightaway, or particularly cinematic line of trees. Continuity was my aim. It's about 22 minutes long.

HOW TO LISTEN:

Autumn is my favorite time of year, so vivid and constantly changing in air and look. I love the stark winters that follow up here where I'm living in Western Pennsylvania. Hills and rivers and trains, steel bridges and old architecture. And even still, the constant incoming of technology and information and the election. The troubles around the world and the country, the stresses and dissonance, and the seeming suddenness we've come to know so well. I wanted to make a companion to all that cinema. But I wanted it to operate without hype or force. Current EVENTS is offered to be experienced at a quieter to mid-level volume, it welcomes the ambient noise of wherever you live or what you're doing without invading your thoughts. Its intent is almost a soundtracking to you being leading women and men. Like Tom Waits said "All broken down by the side of the road, I never felt more alive and alone." That's what I tried to do here, to connect with those moments that sprawl. It's driving music, driving to work or stores or nowhere. Music for leaving and music for arriving. It's late night music, or rush hour music. Music for falling in love and being alone. Music for interiors. Music to make your friends worry about you... Hahahaha...

WHY I DID THIS:

I've loved the ambient work of Brian Eno, and the instrumental work of Ryuichi Sakamoto for years. The Cinema Paradiso pieces by Ennio Morricone have been constant companions for me since forever now. I've often thought instrumental music was the most generous music because it imposed no dialogue. It's pure, and allows each of us to immerse ourselves in our own stories and plots and beauties and aches. I've often found that some of my best lyric writing comes after a period of listening to a lot of instrumental music. Almost as if the absence of language reconnects me to my own interior. That's what I hope this collection offers to you. I don't pretend to be as proficient at this type of music as the artists I mentioned above, or even as my friends in Hammock and Our Ceasing Voice. I am a tourist when it comes to this. I don't consider myself a composer or even a particularly gifted arranger. But I am a pretty good at offering weather via sound and simplicity, and I love the process. Hopefully these pieces become ladders and ropes and hallways to your own thoughts. Ultimately, that's the goal. Again, at its root, I hope this collection offers you yourself. That's why there's no voice or language on Current EVENTS. I wanted you to hear your own voice here. It's my guess that that's what a song should always be doing, because in ourselves we find each other.

AND AS ALWAYS:

As always, when you purchase music, it helps artists to continue offering the work we do. It is always with a giant Thank You that I welcome your participation and advocacy. Music as a listener, and a creator, is an act of love. It really is. I always try to offer you the very best of what I'm capable of. I'm currently working on a new album that was produced by Brian Fallon (of The Gaslight Anthem). It's more in the vein of what you'd expect from me. Actually, I believe it speaks to much of the best of what I do in song and sound. But that's for a moment just a little further down the road. Expect that album in 2017. But right now, I hope you enjoy Current EVENTS. By purchasing this collection you make my continuing forward all the more navigable. So again, thank YOU.

PRICING:

To encourage you to listen to the collection as an entire piece I've priced individual songs at $2. The entire collection is priced at the very fair price of $7. I hope you'll consider buying the whole collection. Above all though, I hope that this music makes for a good companion.

LICENSING:

If you happen to be a film or television person and you're interested in licensing one of these pieces for something you're working on, please write me at matthewryaninfo@gmail.com