What an unconventional week for an album release. Not the typical schedule, like in-store promotions or cd signing sessions, nor live interviews about the new release. Instead, an awful experience with Malev airlines, getting stuck at the Frankfurt airport, a horrible experience with the airport staff and their non-existing customer service, coming down with a cold during the long flight back to the US, followed by the last days of the year mostly spent with coughing and headache.

However, this makes sense for an album release with a non-typical agenda behind it. I’m not crazy for choosing a release date right after Christmas – I wanted to make a point. Transitions is not about selling platinum, nor about meeting the expectations of a director or producer. This one is about focusing on the most important part: original music with zero influence by anything and anyone.

This focus was often forced into the backseat in the past 8 years of my career (which is why there is the word “industry” in the phrases “film industry” and “music industry”). No, I’m not blaming anyone for creating music for order for the past decade, but I can’t express how good it feels to create music for pleasure (or in case of Transitions, compile music that was created for pleasure). I can honestly say, I don’t care if it sells or not – what I care about is being able to share it with you, the listener, for your enjoyment, the way I intended the tracks to be, without having to deal with revisions, changes and any influence by current trends and temp tracks. Like in the naively innocent days of Mountain Flying.

For long I’ve missed this freedom, and never really became a mercenary of the entertainment industry. Between two scores, I always found some time and personal focus to compose from the heart and not from the brain. Compiling these moments of musical escapes into an album before coming out with a new, completely original (and if that’s possible, an even more influence-free) concept work (maybe in 2011) made sense. Calling it Transitions also made perfect sense – it is a 19-track story of my own musical and personal transition, that bridges over a decade of composition, and shows the metamorphoses from Mountain Flying into my recent music and sounds (without giving away the stylistic direction of the next concept album, though!).

To get to this point, your emails from around the world asking for a new album greatly helped as well. I won’t disappoint. While I’m not turning my back to the industry, I will make sure that the priorities first work for you and me. I am thankful for the tremendous experience I gained from working on movies, tv shows and advertising, and now I will shamelessly utilize it for my own, selfish purposes. Don’t expect another Mountain Flying, but a different flight into the world of emotions and new sonics, an adventure you haven’t heard before.

But for now, here is Transitions. It might take a couple of listens to find the coherence between these widely diverse tracks (I will follow up with some “stories behind the tracks” on these pages to help).  If you’re not familiar with Mountain Flying, it’ll be a new kind of adventure to my old and recent musical world. If you are, thank you for joining me in the journey again after 11 years.

I’m back.
[dewplayer:https://www.juliusdobos.com/musicmp3/comeback.mp3]

The Comeback (preview) — from Transitions