Thumpermonkey's Rael Jones to release solo Mother's Echo album

Thumpermonkey keyboard player and guitarist Rael Jones has announced he will release a new classical solo album, Mother's Echo, on November 20. The follow-up to Jones' own 2013 solo album Mandrake, Mother's Echo was written following the death of Jones' own mother.

Outside of Thumpermonkey the Emmy-nominated Jones composes music for television and film and has scored the likes of TV's The Salisbury Poisonings and Harlots, documentaries on Coldplay and Oasis and films such as Les MIserables, My Cousin Rachel, The Festival and Everest.

"This is a deeply personal album for me," says Jones. "I’m attempting to translate emotions and life events into musical structures. The sketches for all the pieces were written in the months following my mother’s death. In some senses I lost her many years earlier. She was in a car crash when I was 6 which left her in bed a lot and changed her dramatically, forever. I was terrified she wouldn’t be there anymore."

Jones' Thumpermonkey bandmates Sam Warren (bass) and Ben Wren (drums) helped create the album's striking artwork, which you can see below.

"The artwork is based on a recurring nightmare I had repeatedly around this time," explains Jones. "I’m alone in my house being dragged inexplicably towards a strange figure - death in human form. It touches my shoulder, our feet lift off the ground, and we fly through the lounge, past my gathered relatives and out of the bay window... at which point I wake up. The cover shows what lies past that window. It’s not so scary after all."

Artists

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.