Bruce Hornsby ‘s 10-track album, Non-Secure Connection, was released during lockdown on August 14 2020.
Every track on “Non-Secure Connection”:
- Cleopatra Drones (3’54”)
- Time, The Thief (3’09”)
- Non-Secure Connection (4’32”) (co-written with Chip DeMatteo)
- The Rat King (2’32”) (featuring Rob Moose)
- My Resolve (5’25”) (featuring James Mercer)
- Bright Star Cast (3’16”) (featuring Jamila Woods and Vernon Reid)
- Shit’s Crazy Out Here (5’14”)
- Anything Can Happen (3’44”) (featuring and co-written with Leon Russell)
- Porn Hour (4’39”) (co-written with Chip DeMatteo)
- No Limits (3’34”)
Guests and collaborators include Jamila Woods, Leon Russell, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) Vernon Reid (Living Colour), Rob Moose and Hideaki Aomori (yMusic), The Frost Symphony Orchestra (University of Miami) and, of course, the Noisemakers.
The new album’s chromaticism and dissonance quotient is exactly twice as high (three songs featuring that language compared to one and a half on the last record). I feel like my music has never been a part of any trend that defined any era of music during my 34 years of doing this. I may be wrong, but that’s how it feels to me.
The full release announcement is on Bruce’s official website.
Order links:
Non-Secure Connection – Bruce Hornsby – sound clips
Non-Secure Connection - the breakdown!
Cleopatra Drones - 73.8%
Time, the Thief - 65.7%
Non-Secure Connection - 40%
The Rat King - 67.1%
My Resolve - 85.2%
Bright Star Cast - 66.6%
Shit's Crazy Out There - 48.5%
Anything Can Happen - 72.3%
Porn Hour - 58%
No Limits - 75.7%
SHELF-LIFE/LONGEVITY - 78%
LYRICS - 62.8%
ARTWORK/LINER NOTES - 70.9%
MUSICALITY - 72.3%
PRODUCTION - 74.2%
COLLABORATIONS - 75.7%
68%
Pretty good!
Bruce's lockdown release give us some new favourites
My Resolve:
First release: My Resolve (purchase here now; Bruce Hornsby and James Mercer) is “a Sisyphean (never completed) tale of the creative life, sung with a fellow climber.”
You can hear a version of this in the above video and at 6’12” of Bruce Hornsby’s Home Session for WNRN radio.
Bright Star Cast
Purchase and download Bright Star Cast right now on iTunes.
“Bright Star Cast” was inspired by the poem “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”, written by James Weldon Johnson and put to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson (performed here by the Winston-Salem State University Choir).
The Rat King
You can hear a version of this at 16’52” of Bruce Hornsby’s Home Session for WNRN radio.
Anything Can Happen
“Anything Can Happen” is taken from a 28-year-old demo recorded with Leon Russell. Leon had asked Bruce for “a Barry White track”. Bruce wrote the music and was asked to pick some lyrics out of a pile. After three listens, Leon had the song fully charted and “sang the hell out of it”. Bruce felt that the rough mix surpassed the record, and recut it with Leon’s vocal synced into the song. Here’s the 1992 version: