If my first album Mountains and Plains was a wide-angle view of the American landscape, 1:46:43 – The Ventoux Trilogy is something more intimate – a deep dive into a single moment stretched across a mountain. It’s based on a real ride: a solo ascent of Mont Ventoux, one of cycling’s most legendary and unforgiving climbs.
During that 1 hour, 46 minute and 43 second effort, I recorded four live data streams – heart rate, speed, power, and cadence – and used them to generate modular synthesizer sequences. These constantly shifting patterns form the sonic backbone of the album: a drone that evolves with the rhythm of the climb, shaped by the mountain’s contours and my own physical limits.
Layered on top are piano overdubs, field recordings from the Ventoux itself – wind, breath, silence – and instrumental textures that follow the road’s psychological arc. The music is structured in three movements: beginning with the gentle slopes and sunlit vineyards, diving into the dense, meditative stillness of the forest, and finally rising above the treeline into a stark, lunar wilderness where the summit looms and the past lingers.
This is not just a cycling record. It’s about surrendering to effort, finding clarity in repetition, and how movement can bring us closer to stillness. It’s about solitude, memory, and the quiet shift that happens when you’re deep in the climb and there’s no one else but you – and the mountain.
Let it unfold, and see where it takes you.
1:46:43 – The Ventoux Trilogy
Double CD + 40 pages colour booklet
