Mensah - Elusive Fantasy (Paradise is a Frequency)

What Your Ears Say & The Cover Looks Like

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Our Brief Thoughts

Last millennium lo-fi jams from Ed Wartts on Paradise Is a Frequency, as his raw, funktified proto drum machine rhythms lead the way for cosmic, jazz licked, parallel dimensional synthesized soul explorations into the meaning of love and life.

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What The Release Notes Say

“It happened one night as I was on my way to a party. Driving along, nice cool summer breeze and I’m listening to my grooves, thinking about my moves at the party. I get this strange and eerie feeling that somebody or something is watching me…" 

~ Ed “Mensah” Wartts 

In all of us, there are the makings of a faint heart murmur - a low, soft pulse quietly waiting to be awakened. The pulse can be heightened, through love, relationships, or traumatic events. It can even be stunted, never to be released or pursued. There are those of us who nurture and recognize that this vibration must surface and, against all odds, will make its mark as a gift that comes from a deep, and sometimes dark place... 

Ed Wartts’ supernatural rendezvous on that cool summer night transported him into the otherworldly. Consumed by memories of missed connections, star-crossed love, and astral projections into the future, Ed’s internal tension between time and space tore open a portal in the fabric of his reality. A shadowy gateway propagating the universe of his expansive compositional stylings and advanced tonal sensibilities: music on the wings of a timeless sound palette brimming with digital keys and MIDI drum programming. 

Ed harnessed the quickly advancing technology of the time into an extraterrestrial language of innermost desire – the plane of his alter ego, Mensah. Unhindered by the previous limitations of structured and expensive studio time, Ed was free to explore the mysterious, and often alien, dimensions of love, destiny, and divinity. Slowly taking shape from within the depths of his Minneapolis and St. Louis home studios between 1982 through 2000, this record of his deeply personal, cosmic journey was never intended for commercial release and only ever materialized on a handful of cassettes shared with close friends and family. 

Mensah’s sci-fi, neo-soul noir has been sleeping peacefully on his hard drive, dreaming of the time when audiences could receive its lush and strikingly contemporary production. Sliding from sophisticated Dam Funk-esque minimal wave (Second Wind; Mellow Conversation; Just Dreamin’) to digital future jazz (Time For the Harvest; Star Streams) and electronic bedroom R&B (Find A New Groove; To Win Yr Love), Mensah conjures reverent, celestial music that transcends the spiritual and the secular to create moods for any sanctuary.

CREDITS
All music and instruments by Ed Wartts 

Ensoniq KS-32 Keyboard 
Kawai K1r Digital Synthesizer Sound Module 
Baldwin Acoustic Piano 
Yamaha DX7 Keyboard 
Kawai R-50e Digital Drum Machine 
Kawai R-100 Drum Machine 
Yamaha JX3P Keyboard 
Boss Dr. Rhythm Drum Machine 

Vocals on 'Find A New Groove" by Lynn Wilson 
Mastered by James Morrison 
Layout Design by Alexander Wolfe 
Original Painting by Stan Solomon

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IF YOU LIKE THAT YOU MIGHT LIKE THE SLOW SOUL PLAYLIST

You can stream the Slow Soul playlist on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Youtube & Soundcloud