ESPERS is the first release by 12 Followers/Meteo Xavier, a student composer from East Tennessee, on Lightfall/Aardvark Records and is designed to be an ambient/electronic composition that stands out from every other new age or soundscape heavy album out there. It was conceived as music that you could fantasize into rather than meditate. Each song is a different world or spirit of its own and no tracks sound alike.

From my standpoint, when I was trying to do this album, I had consumer-grade quality software, almost all of it ambient-based, zero professional hardware equipment and a budget of roughly $700. My goal was to somehow stretch this into a very creative, potentially captivating and absorbing production. As most other ambient records are drone heavy and meant to play during Yoga or sleep, my challenge was doing one that kept you awake and evolved without moving; using soundscapes to create sparse melodies and changes that evoked emotion.

As this was a very difficult production, I was not able to entirely accomplish this goal as the production was nearly crippled in a post-production crash (problems of which could not be fixed as a result), but it survived and came out very well. It is not an unblemished work, but it is one I'm very proud of and it remains very digestible and unique among ambient, new-age albums today.

Features post-production work by Andrew Aversa (Zircon) and piano work on Sagetellah by Michael Huang.

If you'd like to download my FREE VGM album, go to meteoxavier.bandcamp.com. It's will be a great supplement to this album. Enjoy!