"There is depth and class to Guenther's playing" - Nova magazine After returning from the heady classical music scene of London/Europe, in 2009 I moved back to Australia and settled near Perth in Western Australia. I was busking with my electric violin and loop box outside the markets in Fremantle for about 5 months. It had been hot and sunny, and the oceanside lifestyle of Fremantle and the markets had gotten under my skin. These grooves were typical of the music which was coming through in my improvisations at this time. The album was recorded on the farm where I was living at the time, perched in country silence on a small hilltop overlooking a valley. I knew as soon as I moved in there the year before that something special was going to happen creatively - and this was it. All instruments on the album, including the bass, are the sound of my electric violin through various effects (except the drum loops of course). It was cool hearing what the electric violins could do! All the tracks on this album were rewarding and magical to make. Each one was like bathing in a particular quality of universal energy: compassion, appreciation, patience etc. And yet each one has an actual earthly story: "Ancient Bosporus" was inspired contemplating the Bosporus in Istanbul; "House Of Earth" came out of the spirit of the Indian/Pakistan region and features the innovative use of the slide or "bottleneck" technique on the violin; "Morning Dew" is an appreciation of the energies of the Earth I was feeling when I was staying in the south of Austria the previous summer; "Safe Passage" is centered in the North African region's rhythms and sounds. It uses all plucked violin sounds rather than the bow ; "Heartlands Calling" reaches into the stillness, energy and vastness of the heartlands of the universe. The musical inspiration was some of Jean-Luc Ponty's music from my youth in the 1970's; "How Much I Love You" is the story of the benevolent energies which surround us and work with us when we open our hearts to being loved and appreciated by the universe. Musically it was inspired by some of the late 1950's Latino influenced pop music like Johnny & Santo's Sleepwalk classic; "Are You Sirius" shares some lightness of spirit in a more obvious blues-influenced groove, featuring more of the slide violin. All music spontaneously improvised and recorded by Rupert Guenther on electric violins by Arts Music (special thanks to Paul Davies of Arts Music for the kind loan of them). All preamps and overdrive by Tech21/SansAmp. All FX including the octave drop for the bass sounds are using the TC Electronic G Major.