Album Credits:
Composed, mixed, and mastered by Simon Milliman at Urban Jack Productions
Simon Milliman: Vocals, synths, piano, guitars, bass, and orchestrations
Bryan Daste: Pedal Steel
Liner Notes:
Composers of music, blues musicians, painters and photographers in the keen color wheels of their minds all know the importance of call and response. This is unlike the political debate show where the response is locked in debate with the call, attempting to disprove the call, but instead a response that attempts to compliment and build upon the call. My previous album, Erebus, was the exploration of darkness and my response to it is, Eos. In Greek mythology Eos was the goddess of the dawn. It is important to note that she was not the day; she did not bring the sun with her as she traversed from Oceanus across all living things. She was more of a John the Baptist figure, preparing the way for the coming of the day. Eos doesn’t disprove Erebus even as she informs him his time is soon coming to an end. Eos brings some light to the conversation, but it’s an indistinct light, a light that blurs the conversation more than it instructs it.
I’ve attempted to convey this even in the artwork for each album. For Erebus my face is obscured mostly by darkness and shadow, yet I am distinctly there with a peaceful if somewhat serious expression. For Eos the position of my face and the title are switched and the picture is full of sources of light. Yet, my face is even more obscured and ambiguous in all of this light. I also attempted an expression on my face that would be even more confounding, maybe even sinister...just to confuse the issue.
The songs of Eos are all love songs but none of them are classically romantic. They are written for my wife and children and even one (Oh, Singer) for the late great Brazilian singer/songwriter, Renato Russo. Every partner in a committed relationship and every parent committed to their children lives in the grey no matter how black and white their principles may be. When someone we are committed to steps outside of our set views we are not forced to compromise, but do so willingly. This is the basis of so many tragedies and comedies alike. Everything I recorded in Eos is meant to be somewhere between dark and light, somewhere between right and wrong, truth and untruth, fact and alternative fact. I don’t know if I can explain love any better than that.
