Every day is full of noise.

Work. Obligations. Responsibilities. Expectations. The endless collection of things that need to be done, answered, fixed, paid for, attended to or dealt with before we can finally get around to the things we actually care about.

Most of that noise is real. It cannot simply be ignored. We have responsibilities to other people and to ourselves. But somewhere among all of it, the things that once seemed important to us can become quieter.

A hope. An ambition. A creative impulse. Something we wanted to learn, make, explore or become. The signal is still there, but it can be remarkably difficult to hear beneath everything competing for our attention.

Above The Noise is about trying to find that signal again.

The album begins with Signal In The Ether, the sense that something meaningful is still transmitting from somewhere beyond the immediate demands of everyday life. Chasing Ghosts and Destabilization move through uncertainty and distraction, while Clockwork reminds us about the passage of time and reflects the routines and repetitions that can quietly consume enormous portions of our lives.

Desert Planet evokes a vast landscape, cinematic in scale and hopeful in spirit, before Always Remember begins the movement outward. Remember what mattered to you before everything else became so loud. Remember the things you kept promising yourself you would return to. From there, New Horizons looks forward rather than backward.

The closing track, Signal To Noise Ratio, returns to the central idea of the album. The noise never completely disappears. Perhaps it isn't supposed to. The challenge is deciding which signals deserve to be amplified and which can be allowed to fade into the background.

We cannot abandon every obligation and spend our lives doing only what we want. But neither should we allow the machinery of everyday existence to consume all the time and attention we have.

There are things worth making room for.

There are signals worth following.

Sometimes you just have to get above the noise.