Nexus

Description

On 11th September 2017, Virgil Howe the youngest son of Yes guitarist Steve Howe passed away unexpectedly at the age of 41. Yes announced the immediate cancellation of the remaining dates of the Yestival tour. Their duo album Nexus had been completed before the tour started and was due out this year. Steve Howe has decided to continue with these plans. Virgil and I had only recently completed recording Nexus, which contains eleven of his tunes to which I added a guitar to suit each one. We delivered it to InsideOutMusic in August for release on 17th November. We started to work together in 2016 by selecting about nine tunes from his stockpile of piano based music that hed periodically sent Jan & I each time hed written and recorded a new idea. I began adding guitars to them, then Id play them to Virgil. Hed then surprise me by bringing up other channels of instrumentation which Id never heard. The tunes went from straightforward duets to something bigger & better, more of a complete picture than a mere shape. Free Fall & Nicks Star were added from earlier sessions, the latter being his tribute to the passing of his best friend Nick Hirsch.
From first hitting the keys of his fathers Moog synthesizer at the age of four to playing in front of 200,000 people behind the drum kit for FSOLs Amorphous Androgynous, Virgil leaves behind a prolific output that covered a wide range of genres from electronica to psychedelic sounds, from rock to synth and beyond. With his band Little Barrie he also was part of the score for the AMC TV series Better Call Saul. On Nexus, Steve handled acoustic, electric & steel guitars whereas Virgil took care of bass, drums and all keys. The results are beautiful, diverse compositions varying between neoclassical elements, dreamy jazz, straight forward grooves, and cinematic, spacey themes. Nexus is an instrumental album that impresses with its feeling and moods and unites two musicians individual biographies and styles as a fascinating whole.
Nexus explores a completely different side of Virgils ability, as a writer & keyboard player in his own right. His talents were multi-diverse, so sitting at a keyboard & computer or in the middle of his drum kit, at all his regular DJ-ing gigs or on the radio, he always gave his best. The sudden passing of Virgil Howe deeply shocked the entire InsideOutMusic team as it happened just a few hours after he had approved the first press release about Nexus. It was supposed to be a new beginning for an exciting musical collaboration, but now it has become one of the saddest albums we have ever worked on. We left the decision over the release of Nexus up to Steve and respect his wish to continue as originally discussed. Being fathers, too, we can only guess how hard it must be to deal with such a loss and we sincerely hope you will all enjoy Nexus despite the circumstances under which it is coming out. Our thoughts are with the Howe family during this difficult time. Thomas Waber (Label manager/A&R International) & Stefan Franke (Product Manager)