Stephen Whitby releases his second Indus Rush album on Nub Music. Himalayan Suite & Other Tales, a work of mixed genres, is made up of a concept piece capturing the atmosphere and marvel of the mighty Himalayas, interspersed with a collection of more commercial pop songs. Steve was forced into writing instrumental music over the last year through illness. In October 2016, Steve was diagnosed with throat cancer, and as a result, spent the rest of that year in and out of Hospital undergoing Chemotherapy and Radiography treatment.

The songs and music reflect the low and high points of Steve’s experience. The opening track, “Himalayan Suite Parts 1 & 2” describes the vibrant life and dreams of a young boy sheltering from a storm in a beached up boat, dreaming of the Himalayas. He drifts off and then we’re off to India and the Himalayas. Steve’s low point of his treatment, going into Hospital for the first time, is evident in the track “Himalayan Suite – Red Sky”. This was written on the Garageband app. on an iPad on the hospital bed at Western General, Edinburgh.

Happier tracks start to follow and “Himalayan Suite – Mountainscape” starts to change the mood halfway through it as some wonderful sax playing by Bjorn Dahlberg takes the mood from dark to light. “Himalayan Suite – Appointment in Samara” and “Himalayan Suite – Annapurna”, both written whilst on Morphine, a la Aldous Huxley!
The final track is the only track where Steve dared to add any vocal after his cancer treatment. “Himalayan Suite – The Silk Road” takes us through the mountains and heading back west towards Europe, and in our child’s dream, back to a warm sleep in his beached up nest. Of course the vocal is not perfect, as you would expect after the horrors of radiotherapy, but Steve wanted to let people hear what the effects are, and use them to add to the atmosphere of the song, the altitude, the coldness and loneliness of those vast mountains.

The songs interspersed throughout include the singles “Waterfall Dance”, and “Romany days”, as well as four other tracks written before the onslaught of cancer. These tracks include the Political anti Jihadi song “Lost Quarter”, the slow string quartet tune, “Claire”, a Booker T esque “Pink Garlic”, and the tribute to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, “Encinitas Break”.
Read more about Steve's battle and the journey the album took on his Blog:

https://www.indusrush.com/blog