NEW RELEASE
Steve Hackett
The Night Siren
March 24, 2017

Guitar virtuoso and rock legend, Steve Hackett (formerly of Genesis), releases his latest album The Night Siren on Friday, March 24th 2017, through InsideOut Music (Sony). As implied in the title, The Night Siren is a wake-up call…the warning of a siren sounding in this era of strife and division.

Steve Hackett is renowned as an immensely talented and innovative rock musician. He was lead guitarist with Genesis as part of their classic line up with Gabriel, Collins, Banks and Rutherford, who produced several of the band’s most acclaimed albums including Selling England by the Pound (a favourite of John Lennon) and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. With Steve’s extraordinary versatility in both his electric guitar playing and his composing, he involves influences from many genres, including Jazz, World Music and Blues. He is equally adept in his classical albums that include renditions of pieces by composers from Bach to Satie, his own acoustic guitar compositions that have gained the admiration of many, including Yehudi Menuhin, and ambitious guitar/orchestra albums such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, recorded with the Royal Philharmonic.

The Night Siren showcases Steve’s incredible guitar as strongly as ever, along with musicians from several different countries, who Steve invited to join him in celebrating multicultural diversity and unity. This includes singers from Israel and Palestine, who both actively campaign to bring Jewish and Arabic people together. There are also instrumentals from the USA and Iraq, and a multiplicity of sounds, including the exotic strains of Indian sitar and Middle Eastern tar and oud, the ethnic beauty of the Peruvian charango, and the haunting Celtic Uilleann pipes.

Talking about his latest work, Steve says, “This latest waxing represents a bird’s eye view of the world of a musical migrant ignoring borders and celebrating our common ancestry with a unity of spirit, featuring musicians, singers and instruments from all over the world. From territorial frontiers to walled-up gateways, boundaries often hold back the tide. But while the night siren wails, music breaches all defences. To quote Plato, ‘When the music changes, the walls of the city shake’.”

The musical journey takes us from ‘Behind the Smoke’, focusing on the plight of refugees throughout the ages, to the penultimate track ‘West to East’ which reflects on the damage of war and the hope for a better world.
From personal to universal, the themes celebrate the life force, breaking free from chains of repression.