Fusing Folk and World Music, Nolton Lake creates a calm and happy listening atmosphere. A self-taught musician, he has an affinity for organic purity and warm tones. Strongly influenced by Harry Manx -an artist who mixes blues and Indian music in a simple and delightful way- Nolton Lake is a true creative spirit. Inspired by his travels around the world, and fascinated by Indian sitar masters, he seeks purity in poetry. When you take a moment to truly listen, you discover a sensitive strength, an exotic familiarity, a comfort that is decidedly original.

Nolton Lake explains the inspiration for the songs on Pink Lights :

Peace After War was written after a very brief, but special moment that lasted only a few seconds, though it felt much longer to the singer-songwriter. He describes a scene, a woman, an inspiration: She was clear, surrounded by a pink light, and she was smiling at me. Everything around was blurry, I could only see her. That was one of the most powerful moments I have ever experienced in my life. A second can sometimes feel longer than eternity.

When I wrote Dreamers, I was sitting on the banks of the River Ganges in India, in the iconic town of Rishikesh, where the Beatles went for their famous meditative retreat. It's a beautiful town and the water has stunning blue and turquoise hues. It's literally the place where yoga originated from, says the artist. Pondering the distance between people, a distance that leads to so much hatred, pollution, and problems, he envisions a new reality, full of dreamers that together can make the world a better place.

Released last month, Lake Champlain evokes a series of unanswered questions. Sitting on the American shores of Lake Champlain, Nolton Lake wonders about human pleasure and happiness, perched high over another world, a world of which we know nothing. The desire to know more about this world is like the water of a lake: we see a little bit in the depth, but the rest, we are blind to.

Now I Know is a song about mental illness, the feelings of being misunderstood that a person with mental illness might feel. It says nothing and everything all at once: it is confused, unclear, scattered. It's navigating through life in circles, explains Nolton Lake.

Nolton Lake has a deep love for India. Sea Of Mangoes he describes feelings of happiness and freedom which evoke the country he lived in for several months. If I were to die tomorrow, I would want to eat a mango from India before I leave this world. It is one of the best things I have ever tasted. I have traveled a lot in my life, I have walked a lot, but this country has always kept me crazy. Crazy with the desire to see the world, crazy in my creativity. And of course, my beloved Indian sitar comes from there

The instrumental Unification is a musical metaphor. The song is a mixture of Latin rhythms, African percussion, Western acoustic guitar, Australian didgeridoo, and Indian sitar. The desire to bring people together, regardless of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation... no matter who a human being chooses to be, we all deserve to be part of a symbiotic whole, like the instruments in this song.

Peace After War (extrait)

Sea Of Mangoes (extrait)

Unification (extrait)

The Man That Goes Too Far (extrait)

Over The Mountains (extrait)

Bowl Half Full represents a moment of complete stillness. A moment to breathe. The sounds of the beautiful instrument called a Tibetan bowl allows us to relax and the mantra sung forces us to disconnect.

Out To Sea describes the departure of a sailor to the high seas, at a time when their voyages lasted for months, even years. The idea of the sailor can be transposed to many situations in life, sometimes you have to leave, and it’s not always easy. The sailor keeps repeating the words that it will hurt, but he must go.

The Man That Goes Too Far is playful and self-explanatory. The protagonist of the story goes too far with his words, he is a man who tends to give his opinion when it is not wanted… but if we took the time to reach out to him, we could understand him better.

The mountain speaks of barriers and limits, both physical and mental, that we put on ourselves, and that separate human beings from one another. Over the Mountain reminds us that sometimes we have to overcome a mountain just to get to someone we love.

The last track on the album is about a moment frozen in time. The image of the same woman illuminated by pink light, with everything around her blurred, inspired by the song that opens the album. We were in a park, on a sunny day off, no stress or negativity on the horizon. She was reading, I was composing a soundtrack. Life is full of the unexpected, it's full of bumps in the road and difficult moments. Sometimes, we have to stop, really stop, and look around, and realize that here, now, we are fine, safe, and happy. Sometimes, we're Safe Here Now.

The Pink Lights album will be available on all platforms tomorrow.

About Notlon Lake
It was in the humidity of the Asian jungle that Nolton Lake discovered his first notes of music, surrounded by the peoples and cultures that would become part of his creative palette. He grew up in Vietnam, but it was his time in India that had the most profound effect on the singer-songwriter, who now lives in Montreal. Between the acoustic songs and the exciting sounds of World Music, you can hear instruments from every continent, and the echo of a voice that sings to us about the love we all share.

Download : Album artwork (jpg) • Photo (jpg) Credit: Bianca Des Jardins