Last week I launched SAMi, my newest EP, at the Virgin Megastore in Dubai. It was an amazing event, full of love, with people coming from several different countries. There were a very limited number of physical CDs available, and now that the digital launch is imminent I wanted to share some thoughts about the album with those of you who couldn’t join us in Dubai.

SAMi is dedicated to my fans. When I began my solo musical career sixteen years ago, I felt that I was entering into a conversation, a dialogue, with my listeners. That warm conversation between friends—old and new—has continued through these years, and I feel extraordinarily blessed that my music has met with such profound understanding.

SAMi is a side project, a chance for me to delve into my British musical roots. I did this to some extent with my 2010 album Wherever You Are, but that side of my heritage is fully developed here. The sound is contemporary, minimalist, and distinctly edgy. The lyrics have layers of meaning, but they all speak to my personal spiritual journey. In this time of shallow materialism, consumerism, of lies parading as truth and shouting for our attention, it can be hard to know what is real. In its way, SAMi is my response to this turbulence. That response is conveyed in a contemporary musical language and its aim is to point to transcendence, to a path beyond the limited self.

One of the tracks, ‘Call My Name’, tells the story of the bliss of Divine Union that was mankind’s condition before our Fall from paradise, and how the echo of our longing to return lies at the essence of all human love.

In ‘Crazy’ I evoke the ‘eye of the heart’. When we see with the eye of the heart, we discern the profound significance of the realities that surround us. We can stop being tossed about by the stormy surface of the waves and reach the profound peace beneath them. Saints and sages of many traditions speak of this way of seeing and the paths to achieve it.

The themes running through these two songs and the rest of the tracks are love—ecstatic and consuming—and the wisdom of the heart.

With just one day left till it’s release, I’m excited for your response to this latest undertaking and to the next step on our continued journey.

GET THE NEW EP HERE:
https://sy.lnk.to/SAMi