Americana - showcase of the Americana set on our new album

The tracks that got a bit forgotten in the previous showcase in all their ragged glory.

Also, Twenty Years is The Civil Wars not the Dixie Chicks as suggested there!

Transatlantic Arti (studio version)

Transatlantic Arti (making the track)

Around Creation in 80 Minutes - The Baba Lovers "6 Degrees of Separation; 7 Degrees of Love"

Sedgeford poet Gaz Calway has teamed up with the North Carolina singer-songwriter Gabriella Tal on an album of unusual lovesongs. The album - called "6 Degrees of Separation; 7 Degrees of Love" - begins on an Indian hilltop with a devotional chant before taking the listener through a hell at the centre of earth and out the other side to Eden and in a thrilling ascent of seven heavens, each more enchanting and ego-free than the last.

"Hell isn’t other people; it's ourselves, our self-fulfilling

Cock up conspiracy clouds, our I-land's alien nation."

In the process, the performers experience a growing self-knowledge and meet ideas and characters drawn from all over the world and from all arts, cultures and Faiths.  There are references to Dante's hell, purgatory and heaven; the Arthurian quest for the grail; the Sufi 'Conference of the Birds;' the soul-realising love stories of Leila and Majnun and Lancelot and Guinevere;  Celtic maidens, Homeric and Hindu gods, Judaic angels,  Shiva's snake;  Jacob's ladder; and an immortal Light glimmering beyond the dark forest of the material world.

Listeners voyage through (inner) space like grail knights, preparing to overcome the terrifying challenge of the fourth heaven where ego and love struggle for final supremacy and to avoid a great fall back to the start. 

Dante was guided on a similar path by Virgil and Beatrice. Gaz and Gabriella are guided all the way to the Seventh Heaven by the written works of the twentieth century Indian Spiritual Master Meher Baba, at whose Tomb-shrine the musical game begins.

The attractively packaged album with 24 page lyric booklet is released on 31 January and available via www.thebabalovers.bandcamp.com where an online version is also available for download.  The duo's online single "Heavenly Moon" featuring two tracks from the album is available there now. The album releases here on 31 January 2019 - https://thebabalovers.bandcamp.com/album/6-degrees-of-separation-7-degrees-of-love

7 Flights - Gabriella Tal and Gareth Calway

Gaby's Seven Flights as a video playlist

composer/performer Gabriella Tal in her library in N. Carolina

Lyricist Gareth Calway after eating his latest birthday cake in UK

Gabriella Tal and I have been co-operating on a sequence of ghazals (Persian love lyrics), working title 7 Flights To Heaven. 

This is the place to find links to what we've done so far. Keep coming back as this blogpost will be updated as we add more and as I work through our back catalogue. One (p)operatic voice and an eloquent acoustic guitar. All you need!

If You Conquer  The oooo- ooohs are divine!

All The Heavens In A Thought The calm after the fury

And, finally, the seventh heaven: This is God

These lyrics are written for the female voice and are love songs of increasing intensity. 

For those who also like maps, quests, drumbeats and battles (like me) there are alternative beat poem versions in the male voice, telling the same story in different words. The genre here is heart-beat music, a bit rocky. 

This Face That Burns Upon My Eye In Searing Fiery Gale  'Divine desperation' anybody?

666 Rockets The afterlife as a fireworks display