A significant portion of Patterns was written and recorded while also working on my last album, a collaboration with Ben McElroy. Working with Ben helped me arrive at a somewhat looser approach to composing. Rather than developing a piano melody for weeks or months before recording it, I stretched my previous writing pattern to make more room for instinct. The result is an album with more spontaneity and more textures than many of my earlier pieces.
“Pardon the Garden” is the first single by Ben McElroy and A Spot on the Hill from the album Everything was different yesterday, released in March 2023 by The Slow Music Movement. The track combines A Spot on the Hill’s impressionistic, minimalist piano with McElroy’s atmospheric strings, drone and found sounds.
Unguarded, released in September 2021, veers away from the multilayered instrumentals of previous Spot on the Hill releases and explores a musical intimacy and fragility centered around the piano.