Dale Nichols - Floating Through (Self Release)

The Slow Music Movement
Jun 24
1 min read

This is the album cover of Dale Nichols', EVE 3.0 Album. It shows pixelated abstract art which splashes of pink, gold, yellos and black. Text reads "EVE 3.0" and "Music by Dale Nichols" in bold white letters.

Dale Nichols is a forward looking pianist and composer from Vancouver, equally adept playing those big wooden beasts for the purists, as he is on today's electronic pianos, writing music for virtual reality, soundtracks and video games.

A black and white photo of Dale Nicols, the Vancouver pianist and composer, playing piano in a quiet, sunlit room. The atmosphere is calm and focused, with a cityscape visible through large windows.

I'm also pleased to report that when he leans to the electronic side of the musical spectrum he's got a pleasing tendency to play and produce lazy, hazy chill-out tunes that blend his classical roots with star gazing synth pads that float through the speakers and hang invitingly in the air.

He's also just released a new album that is pretty much the sum of all his parts with a nod to the 90s chill-out heyday, and even provided a welcome thirty two minute mix of the album for your continuous listening pleasure, but one track in particular jumped out at me - "Floating Through".

The softest of key caresses gets the ball sedately rolling, each note given space to breathe and reverberate, melting its emotional resonance into the next unhurried progression at the last second to ensure that this blanket of sunset serenading frequencies never dips below warm and comforting. Honestly I can't think of a better tune in 2025 to celebrate the sun sinking into the Mediterranean in Ibiza's Western facing beach bars than this, and it's currently at top spot in the Slow Balearic Playlist as a consequence.