Tidal surfaced a song I'd never heard. It hit me immediately. I saved it, went straight to the album, and from the first note — I knew.
The band was Skyharbor. The album, Guiding Lights. Progressive rock, niche by nature, but a genre where the good bands are genuinely excellent. Skyharbor is one of them. The album is almost perfect in every way that actually matters.
Then I checked the release date. 2014. Eleven years ago. A completely different era of my life, a completely different world.
If they'd recorded it yesterday, I'd feel exactly the same.
I work closely with AI. Things change fast — almost monthly. I don't think anything moves as quickly right now as this field does. That's just my reality.
Which makes it striking to discover something made over a decade ago that lands just as hard as anything from today. Guiding Lights is a testament to what human creativity and mastery can do. Not perfectionism across the board — just near-total excellence in the things you can actually hear and feel.
That discovery gave me real hope.
There's great music already out there, already finished, just waiting to be found. I haven't heard most of it. That thought gives me energy in a way that's hard to explain but easy to feel.
Discovering new things makes me feel like I'm not getting older. And "new" just means new to me — not newly released. This album is eleven years old.
It's also brand new.