Kevin Bronson on April 27th, 2018

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Composer Jonathan Haskell released his first batch of ambient instrumental music under the Seven Saturdays name eight years ago, and in various incarnations he’s been coaxing cinematic marvels from his Rhodes ever since. His last official Seven Saturdays release was five years ago, but in collaboration with two singer-songwriters, he has released music under the names POLLA (with Zoe-Ruth Erwin of Little Red Lung) and Glasz (with Jim Evens of Helen Stellar). Both of them have guested on Seven Saturdays releases, too, so it gets confusing. But suffice to say that if Haskell has a chewy center as a composer, it would be in instrumental music like on his first EP. 

Seven Saturdays lives again, today releasing the new single “Vertigo” — but even in doing so he enjoys an almost-incidental contribution from one of his collaborators. There are two versions of the new single, one instrumental and one with vocals from ZÖE (Erwin’s new nom de tune). Both are equally stunning.

“I initially set out to make a record that sounded like ‘A Beautiful Day’ [a song from the first EP] because musically, that’s the space where I’ve always felt the most free and inspired,” Haskell explains. “Since the last official Seven Saturdays release, I’d been focusing on other projects. … It had become a fun experiment to collaborate full time, but after a while, I started to want to return to form and explore the depths of instrumental music again.”

Working with producer Steve Kaye (Sunking Studios) and utilizing the talents of drummer Chris Allis and bassist Keith Joyner, Haskell finished the 6-minute instrumental. But funny things happen when you share work with friends, right? Especially when they happen to be living in Iceland with a studio handy.

“Upon hearing the final version, Zoe offered to sing on it as a trial. Just to see,” Haskell says. “And of course when she sent the tracks back from her studio in Iceland, the song was transformed into something entirely new. Something that I never could have imagined and only she could have done. Zoe is one of the most creative people I’ve ever met, and her vocals have this otherworldly quality to them that’s hard to describe.”

So, Haskell says, “I decided to put both out as the single “Vertigo’ — one featuring Zoe, and [the other] as the original instrumental as it was first dreamt. Everybody wins.”

Everybody.

||| Stream: “Vertigo” (feat ZÖE) and the instrumental version