Focus ‎– In And Out Of Focus

Recorded in one wintry week on the North York Moors, The Unthanks In Winter is an extensive, completist time-capsule of the season, featuring Christmas tunes known throughout the western world, mixed with the traditional and the newly written, all passed with great care and love through The Unthanks filter. With most pieces drifting into the next, In Winter is a dream-like winter fantasia, embracing both the dark and the light in the most ritualistic of seasons. Moving in and out of focus, like a memory, its a bittersweet hymnal to our shared winter experience.

Recorded in one wintry week on the North York Moors, The Unthanks In Winter is an extensive, completist time-capsule of the season, featuring Christmas tunes known throughout the western world, mixed with the traditional and the newly written, all passed with great care and love through The Unthanks filter. With most pieces drifting into the next, In Winter is a dream-like winter fantasia, embracing both the dark and the light in the most ritualistic of seasons. Moving in and out of focus, like a memory, its a bittersweet hymnal to our shared winter experience.

In 1972, Focus was experiencing planetary success with the single "Hocus Pocus" and the accompanying LP Moving Waves. With this kind of momentum, guitarist and leader Jan Akkerman decided it was time for a parallel solo career. Profile is not disconnected from his work with Focus, but was at the time a good medium to show the extent of his talent.

In the score to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 (from 1801) there is written “Sonata quasi una fantasia.” I started thinking about that phrase upon listening to Bernt Moen Trio’s The Storm. My association was not to the fact that the popular name of Beethoven’s sonata is the Moonlight Sonata, although references to nature or natural phenomena seem to be in common. But it was the “quasi una fantasia” that struck me – like a fantasy.

Using revolutionary technology Focus Magic corrects both out-of-focus blur and motion blur in photographs. It works both as a Windows stand-alone program and as a Photoshop plug-in for Windows or the Mac. Focus Magic works as a plug-in for Photoshop (including Photoshop Elements and LE), Paint Shop Pro, PhotoImpact, ACD's FotoCanvas, Corel's PhotoPaint (part of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite) and other image editing programs.