Sometime back in the late 1980's my brother Martin decided to teach himself how to play guitar. Once he got the basics together it seemed that almost out of nowhere he started writing a stream of songs, all of them quite good, some really powerful and beautiful, and some surprisingly dark. In short order he put together a band named Shade and started gigging out with the material. Sort of a post-prog power pop vibe, driven by his distortion guitar. I was an instant fan. We even played a few double bills with his band opening for my group Event Horizon.

Shade broke up after a couple of years and Martin went on to commit these songs to tape in the early 1990's using a four-track cassette recorder, very advanced technology for the day. You can hear the tracks here, presented in their original form.