EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE – THE BOOKLET. https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1384133/everywhere-and-nowhere-booklet.pdf

This album is a personal self-portrait, shaped as much by uncertainty as by sound. At its core lies the cello—my primary instrument and longest companion—threading through songs that explore the doubts, fears, and quiet stubbornness involved in continuing to write and produce music later in life. It is also an album about negotiation: between intuition and technology, tradition and possibility, and between the human creator and the rapidly expanding presence of AI in the creative process.

Rather than treating AI as a novelty or threat, these songs examine it as a collaborator, mirror, and provocation. What does authorship mean when generation and curation blur? Who is the artist when tools begin to respond with unsettling familiarity? Throughout the album, the roles of composer, performer, producer, and curator overlap—sometimes comfortably, sometimes uncomfortably—reflecting a creative landscape that is still being defined.

The opening instrumental, “And So It Begins,” sets the tone by reaching back to one of my earliest and most enduring influences: the exploratory jazz-rock of the 1970s, where virtuosity and risk went hand in hand. “I Am Eklektika”follows as a kind of musical autobiography, sketching the long and winding path that led here. “Till Tomorrow Runs Dry” captures the fragile optimism of this current creative phase—a hope that curiosity will outlast hesitation, and that boundaries can still be pushed.

Several tracks circle the question of belonging. “Everywhere and Nowhere” reflects the unease of working across many genres at once, and the sense that by being everywhere, you may end up fitting nowhere. “Open Sky” extends this thought into the future, imagining a time when human-AI collaboration is no longer contested but simply part of the musical air we breathe. “Undefined” and “Becoming” dig deeper into the same terrain, asking whether artistic fulfilment truly requires categorisation, recognition, or commercial validation—or whether the act of making itself is enough.

The relationship with AI becomes more personal and more unsettling in “Seen By a Machine,” a song about the strange experience of feeling recognised by an algorithm, as if it understands aspects of your creative identity before you have fully articulated them yourself. “Without Losing Myself” responds directly to that unease, wrestling with the central dilemma of AI collaboration: how to embrace new tools without surrendering artistic integrity, authorship, or humanity.

The album closes with “Invisible House,” its most inward-looking piece, based on a short story. It asks a question as old as creativity itself: how often are the things we build most carefully invisible to those closest to us, and how do we live with that distance? In an era of unprecedented creative possibility and exposure, it remains a quietly universal concern—and one that still echoes long after the final note fades. Where do we go from here.....

Steve Lewis, eklektika.berlin, December 2025