Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill

Stealing its title from the words on Robert Louis Stevenson's grave in Samoa, the Trecento album The Wide And Starry Sky was recorded by Sean Smith and myself throughout 2004 and early 2005 and contains what I regard as our best work to date. From beginning to end there are few things I'd do differently now, nearly two years from its creation.

The songs all have stories to tell and memories attached, but I'll leave you to interpret them in your own way. Instead I'll write briefly about the musical origins of some of the tracks.

"Paringa", "Grave Of A Clipper", "and the rain . . .", "Day Of The Lord", and "Transit Of Venus" were, with edits and overdubs, carved out of Sean's piano improvisations. In fact, Sean's piano in "Painga" was surreptitiously recorded without Sean's knowledge as he was noodling away at the keys and drinking an Australian wine. This is why it begins somewhere in the middle. I thought it made an interesting opening track, as if you were arriving at a performance that had long since begun. This was recorded during our seventh year of work and is a continuation of what had come before, so Trecento's performance began a long time ago.

"707" found its beginnings after a listening session that included The Album Leaf and Chroma Key's Graveyard Mountain Home. "In Summer's Arms" and "Transit Of Venus" are from jams based around my piano loop experiments.

"Red Heaven" and "Winter" are the hardest I've ever worked and the proudest musical moments of my life. My solo pieces "Heterodyne" and the title track owe inspiration and debt to Steven Wilson's Bass Communion and Harold Budd, respectively.

"The Long Walk" is a sound collage of field recordings collected on Ofu Island and is a hidden, uncredited track (along with "A New Year") on the original CD release.

With help from Marc Nelson on bass and guitars, and Jan Schmall's extraordinary vocals ("Red Heaven") Sean and I have tried to paint a vivid, sometimes orchestrated, sometimes stripped bare portrait of the world we see around us.

We now offer the album free for you to download. We always appreciate feedback, please send it our way.

If you want to own a "hard copy" of the album, a few remaining CDs (with full artwork) are still available in our store.

--Terry
July 2006