22 close musician friends of Saki's worked together for 3 years to help bring his album fruition. It's finally time to share it with the world.
A 14-song album containing Kaskas’s unfinished songs released June 28th 2019, produced by his longtime friend Jeff van Dyck, who collected musicians from around the world to finish the project called, fittingly, Theodosius, a potpourri of songs ranging from heavy metal to classical, from jazz to pop to space music and alt rock.
“I been listening to the masters and the music is beautiful, thrilling, breathtaking and rocking!!! So many wonderful people participated. We all feel so lucky to help bring Saki’s awesome tunes to completion.” - Jason Michas
A note from Jeff van Dyck:
In the 10 years leading up to his passing, Saki was slowly working on an album in his spare time. His productivity on it was slowing down towards the end. A month before he died in November 2016, he and I hung out in his studio with a nice bottle of scotch and he played me all the songs on his album. He had written some great songs, all instrumental, and all sorts of genres. I gave him my honest feedback and suggested he stop using drum machines and use real drummers for a more live feel, and start to think about adding vocals and lyrics. He got really excited about these ideas. I told him I would help him track the drums and vocalists.
I think the logistics of doing this himself felt unachievable to him at the time. I had recently been recording a lot of live players in my band FuzzPilot (I was the drummer) and felt comfortable with the engineering process. So the plan was I was going to start to help him finish off his album in early 2017, we were going to hire some extra musicians to add some polish, and we were both looking forward to working together again.
Then Saki passed away.
After his funeral and wake I made the big decision to finish off his album on his and his family's behalf. I invited a bunch of his old music friends that he played with over the years, to record parts on the album. This included drums, bass, guitar, and vocals. I thought it would take me a year, but here we are, two and half years later in June 2019, and I’m just about to finish it.
It has been an emotional journey working on the album, somewhat confronting listening to recordings of him playing, as if he’s still here. I guess this is how I’ve chosen to process his passing. In fact all of the musicians involved have gone through the same thing, and in some ways it’s made it a little easier, cause we’ve gone through it together.
I would like to thank Saki's family for trusting me with his music, and all of Saki's friends who participated in the recording and release of the album. Saki would have loved this.
Other online music stores: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/sakikaskas/theodosius
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