Finally, after a long year working on this album, our space odyssey album ”Ride to Heaven” is out. The idea on this album began after our showcase at JazzIAm Barcelona, in March 2025 with the Cosmic Trio (Mateusz Smoczynski on violin/baritone violin, Ramón López on drums and tabla, and me on marimba, piano and castanets). It went so well and the impression on the present professionals was so palpable, we had to present this special trio music in a professionally recorded album.
From the decision in March 2025 until the recording in May 2025, my job was to get together all the music for it, and have the album both make musical sense and tell a story. It was not until the end of March 2025, around the 27th of March, that I composed the title track ”Ride to Heaven”, in one of those Ibizan crazy composing nights at 3 a.m, and then it was clear which was to be the direction of the album. The following pieces came together little by little, putting together some of my oldest compositions (Acceptance Steps and Debussy Dances) with compositions written between 1 month or 2 weeks before the recording itself. ”The Docks” was written in April 2025, when I was playing in Galicia, sitting on the city dock at sunset time, it just came to me magically. Fly Low, Fly High was written 2 weeks before recordings, for example.
The recording process was beautiful, we chose the studio of Mateusz’ brother, Jan Smoczynski in Nieporet, Poland, ”Tokarnia 2.0”, in a lake village 30min from Warsaw. An all green scenery, humid by the lake’s proximity, staying in a wooden, big hotel, and the general calm, almost empty ambience helped so much on creating this album. We recorded all in 2 full days, having to say ”Ride to Heaven” was the most difficult to record, it was literally a ”Ride to Heaven” and conveying such a strong message into a song cannot be done that easily without having previously on it.
After the recordings, I went to Berlin, to work on the sound with our sound engineer, Klaus Scheuermann, who works from his studio 4Ohm, in Kreuzberg. The city caused a big impression on me, and it was such a different working ambience to composing in Ibiza or recording in a polish lake village. Luckily, we did a good job and the sound allowed the music to convey well into the future audiences.
From this point, the point was to get the album into a label, I wanted to release in Germany, as the country is welcoming us and our music with such open arms, that I found it was the best we could do to give back. After some months, I found the cool people of XJAZZ! from Berlin, who manage a label under the same name, with distribution from ”The Orchard”, a filial of Sony Music. This was the perfect fit for our music.
The previous 4 months before the release have been of non-stop 24h/7 work. Having created myself the album cover, dealt with the rest of physical edition designs, PR agency, PR materials, printing,.. it’s really a miracle that I managed to get all done while delivering my best in concerts at the same time (Essaouira in December, Ibiza in February, Cádiz and Stuttgart in March, and Hamburg on the same release day).
Now all is left is for all of you to enjoy this album. Thank you so much for tuning in!
When destiny calls, we must ride into it; that’s the spirit behind Andrés Coll’s new album’s title
“Ride to Heaven”. From beginning to end, the album unfolds as a musical/spacial odyssey
(structured as in a dramatic play), through universal human themes: courage, nature’s call, hope,
farewells, and the spirit of adventure. Joined by Mateusz Smoczyński and Ramón López, the
trio presents their hovering/above ground sound, ”The Avant-Groove”. Ride to Heaven is both
a title and a message: an invitation to ride toward one’s destiny with joy and courage, to
fearlessly embrace life as a whole.
You can listen to the full album here: https://open.spotify.com/intl-es/artist/324Go7ruX1upDVaaP1RHAn?si=M6GcmGi2TWGyKi0uhuuY4Q
And support the music by acquiring a physical/digital copy here: https://andrescollodyssey.bandcamp.com/album/ride-to-heaven
