From Home to Home is quite similar to the albums this group had put out in the late '60s as the Kaleidoscope (the British Kaleidoscope, not to be confused with the American band of the same name). In fact, it's similar enough to the Kaleidoscope records to make one wonder why they bothered to change their name. Perhaps there is more polish and sophistication in the production, and a slightly heavier rock sound. But the focus is still gentle, story-like songs with debts to both late-'60s Pink Floyd and late-'60s Beatles, though the songs are not nearly as memorable as the work by those bands, and there is not nearly as much balance between chipper and somber material as the Beatles and Pink Floyd mustered…
One evening in April 2020, at the height of Italy’s lockdown, Ludovico Einaudi waited until his family had gone to bed before taking out his iPhone to record himself at the piano. 12 Songs From Home is the result—an intimate record of a solitary artist, performing pieces from his most acclaimed solo albums. Since the start of Italy’s quarantine, the pianist and composer had been streaming concerts from home to thousands of fans. “I started to enjoy these connections because I had to cancel my concerts,” he tells Apple Music. “So for those audiences, and also for the many others that had to stay at home, I played a few times.” Einaudi then had the idea of creating a snapshot of those concerts. “I thought that it would be nice to remember the moments that we all shared. So I decided to revisit some of my repertoire over the past years—music from the late 1990s up until now. And I made a collection of 12 songs from different periods. It was a very simple idea.”
For a virtually unknown (in the United States) Scottish guitar player, Bert Jansch has had his fair share of anthologies. 1998's Blackwater Side and 2003's Legend: The Classic Recordings focused singularly on his late-'60s heyday, while 2002's two-disc Dazzling Stranger – still the superior choice – followed his career through the turn of the millennium. Castle's Running from Home: An Introduction To attempts to balance all three by sticking with a single disc and cramming it with 21 tracks that run the gamut from 1965-2002.
Just some parsecs away from home is Boulderdash fourth album. This work proceed the expiring of sonic terrain, this time with a bit more aggressive harmonics and melodies, still with the so typical Boulderdash weaving layers of melodies and soundscapes.