Grant Mackay has always been an adventurous musical artist, who has explored classical, jazz, rock, world, and electronic music. A well-rounded artist, he also has experience in conducting small chamber ensembles. His numerous releases feature his synthesizer work, nature sounds and orchestral and world music instruments.
To explore and experience Grant Mackay’s music, you can purchase his albums through his Bandcamp website, Amazon, eBay, and Discogs, or stream them via Spotify and Apple Music.
Down in the Delta, at hobo camps under a hundred railway bridges and a way up in the mountain hollers came a music filled with soul, heartbreak, joy and strength. On the fringes of society, these songsmiths, pickers and singers crafted a new kind of sound forged in the fires of suffering and hardships that spoke to something as old as time itself.
Hobo Gents have gone back to the earliest roots of Delta Blues, hobo music and old timey mountain music. They have extracted the very essence of these forms and then distilled them down into newly, re-imagined arrangements that bring forth the full power and brilliance of these artists’ original works.
Featuring music by Son House, Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson along with the well-known hobo anthems, “Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “Railroad Bill” plus more!
A journey to the early crossroads of popular music.
Listen/Purchase at my website on Bandcamp: LINK HERE
1st and 2nd violins: ?
Viola: Anthony Rapoport
Cello: Anthony Christie
Available from my Bandcamp Website: LINK HERE
Inspired by the Bardo Thödol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead) and other writings on past lives, Bardo draws musical ideas from a myriad of places and eras, then sonically ventures into the void of the “bardo state” or “life between life” state. Using an orchestra of world music instruments Bacchus weaves a symphony for many lives.
This special reissue of this “classic” album of world orchestral music is now available as a highly collectible Limited-Edition. Beautifully packaged in a plastic-free, eco friendly cardboard album sleeve, this new edition also has stunning full-colour disc artwork printed in an ultra-gloss finish to highlight the artwork’s finest details.
Experience anew the exotic sounds of unusual world instruments like the Kanun (Syrian Zither), Kora (African Harp, Setar (Persian Lute) and even the massive power of the giant bass saxophone! All of these and other world music instruments are artfully arranged with Western strings, wind instruments and synthesizers into powerful and evocative orchestral-like compositions.
Listen/Purchase at my website on Bandcamp: LINK HERE
Past lives, reincarnation, magic, Druids, the Celts, and other worlds were all themes Stephen Bacchus had composed for his two earlier releases, Ancient Mysteries (1994) and Bardo (1996). It was because of these two albums that the commission for Of Magicks, Myths & Mortals, and The Serpent’s Egg came about.
In 2000, Stephen Bacchus was specially commissioned by Frog and Nightgown Theatre Productions to compose incidental music and soundscapes for a theatrical performance of the play “Of Magicks, Myths & Mortals and The Serpent’s Egg. This album is the first time the complete incidental music to this play has ever been released. Fully remixed and remastered.
(From the original press release about the play):
“…Three druid preistesses to guide them…Two spellbinding stories of magical worlds where anything might happen…One hero to save the world from ultimate destruction…”
Composed, sequenced and recorded in 2000 at Cadorna Sound, Toronto.
Remixed and remastered in the spring of 2022 at Camborne Sound, Camborne, Ontario, Canada.
Design & layout: Grant Mackay
Special thanks to: MaryAnne Mackay
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This album “taps” into the artist’s most distant sound and music memory. What drew Bacchus into the world of “aural” art first was sound before music. In the early 1970s, he began to compose in Musique Concrete (the experimental technique of musical composition using recorded sounds as raw material). From there, he expanded into experimental electronic music and modern music (or classical Avant-guard). Sound and music have always been Stephen Bacchus’ vehicles for discovering new realms of the unknown within. “The Memory Tap” as a whole is a reintegration of the artist’s earlier sound and music explorations into his overall composer identity.
Listen/Purchase at my website on Bandcamp: LINK HERE
“Deep, beautiful, often heady, The Memory Tap is an album to be celebrated.” Read Full Review Here
– Ibrahim Khider, internet broadcaster/online reviewer
“It is dreamy. It is majestic, inspirational, powerful, and it is visionary”
– Tim Clement, composer
“A standout in the field.”
– Scott Mackay, Science Fiction author
“Spacious music…delivered with ambient shifts of tone and meaning”
– Beck H.
“…warmly ambient, fusion inspired and listenable…very meditative”
— Renee Gelpi – Interplanetary Radio Group
This album gets its title from the hiatus Bacchus would take between albums. During these long breaks, the artist continued to write individual tracks, and now for the first time, they have been compiled into a full album!
A digital-only release, these tracks are available as downloads or streaming exclusively on Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Google Music, and now Bandcamp!
Listen/Purchase at my website on Bandcamp: LINK HERE
“It sounds beautiful, I love every minute of it.”
— Renee Gelpi INTERPLANETARY RADIO GROUP
“This album can stand alongside any of the very finest ambient recordings I’ve encountered.”
— Beck H.
“Hinterland” is probably the most mature and sophisticated recording of Stephen Bacchus…”
— Richard Gürtler, Music Reviewer (Bratislava, Slovakia)
“Tomita comes to mind, and Vangelis. Nice arrangements/orchestration. Uplifting indeed.”
— Tim Clément, composer
“…Pristine purity and clarity of the north woods emerges in the melodies and ambience of Hinterland.”
— Peter R., Retail Music Consultant
In Medieval times “The Keep” was the innermost and strongest structure of a castle. Stephen Bacchus has gone into “The Keep” of his musical archives and remastered and released for the first time – a three-decade retrospective of his works. For the intrepid musical explorer, this collection spans the entire spectrum of bacchus’ career and writing styles. It also includes the new track, “Gratitude,” written especially for this release. Now available as a 2020 Reissue: 10th Anniversary “Keepsake” Limited Edition in a special digipack sleeve.
— Review by Artemi Pugachov
A collection of ambient and atmospheric works from the mid-1980s reflecting the artist’s earlier influences. Captured here, for the first time on CD, is music evocative of cavernous underground warehouses and abandoned munitions factories, deep cold Canadian winters, and lost childhood memories.
“Without a doubt, this album is an amazing tribute to the direction and framework of the ambient genre. Whether trying to ease the body or the mind, Ambient Origins Collected Works is the remedy one needs to achieve relaxed enlightenment.”
— Reviewed by Digital Artifact Magazine
“Overall, it’s an album that isn’t about to change the face of music as we know it, but, as a chill-out soundtrack, it works in all the right places.”
— Review by Senna Redmond Future Music Magazine
Listen/Purchase at my website on Bandcamp: LINK HERE
