Resonating between sky and sea, you will hear The Saxophones; the husband and wife duo of Alexi Erenkov and Alison Alderdice whose minimalist after-hours tones will prop you up amidst the darkest corner of a smoky lounge bar. Documenting the next chapter of their lives having returned to Alexi’s childhood home 20 years later - this time with kids of their own - their third album To Be A Cloud resounds like a backyard soundtrack of rediscovery; rekindling their love for the jazz of their instrumental namesake and revealing what happens when just as a cloud transforms to rain, then snow, then river and returns once again to cloud, life comes full circle.
“The title was inspired by a passage of Zen monk Thich Nat Hanh’s writing in No Death, No Fear which both calms my own fear and leaves me with doubts,” explains Alexi, of the album channelling its influence of comforting yet disturbing limbo. “He uses clouds as a metaphor to illustrate the impermanence of all things, suggesting clouds are no different from people in their fleeting nature. Suffering arises when we try to preserve a person, a moment, or an experience and fail to recognize that all things are both fleeting and cyclical. Hanh contends the cloud does not die, it simply changes form, and if we look deeply, we can see the cloud in the rain.”
