Nocturnica - CD

Newly released!! This is the first-ever release of Nocturnica, available here on CD and also on digital streaming platforms. 

Easily the most classically oriented of all The Raylius Experiment albums, Nocturnica is a collection of songs mostly written and recorded by Raylius in 1991 and 1992. A blend of beautiful melodies, restful lullabies, angelic praises, and bursts of intense passion, it calls to mind the sensuousness of his early music love, the Chopin Nocturnes.

"Nocturnica 1," "Heaven Sent," "Nocturnica 2," and "Under the Moonlight" all elicit the feeling of a divine orchestral performance. The reworked "On the Bank of the Yamuna River" from Daydreams is upgraded sonically but holds to the same dreamy lullaby spirit as the original, with the 24-note ostinato sequence played with a variety of different instrument timbres, like a giant 3-dimensional celestial music box floating around the heavens. It is also one of the most memorable pieces and has a way of sticking with the listener long after hearing it. 

"Celestial Simplicity," co-written with Higher Octave Music artist Richard Buxton, appears in the form of its original arrangement, which Raylius created in 1989. Of the writing process for the song, he relates that "It was very much like the way Lennon and McCartney worked together in the mid-Beatles era. Richard had written the acoustic piano parts you hear in the introduction and verses, with the piano melody and chords all in the pentatonic scale, and we all loved it. When he handed it over to me to fill it out into a complete song I just started hearing that string melody in my head, and that naturally opened up into the middle 8 bits that I also added, where the chords shift to the minor of the 2nd while keeping up a slight variation of the rhythmic pattern of the piano from his original idea." Raylius worked up his full arrangement in Richard's studio but it came out more a track suited for an album by The Raylius Experiment than for Richard's album Exotic Simplicity (1991), although that version did preserve all of Raylius' strings, harp, and electric piano as are heard here. 

This 2025 edition was remixed at Raylius Studios from the original multi-track recordings (and from the 1989 multitrack midi recordings of "Celestial Simplicity"), with new "violin-guitar" melody parts added by Raylius on "On the Bank of the Yamuna River" and "Celestial Simplicity." 

Track Listing:

1. Nocturnica 1 - 5:25
2. Under the Moonlight - 7:09
3. On the Bank of the Yamuna River - 7:48
4. Heaven Sent - 6:32
5. Celestial Simplicity - 5:47
6. Nocturnica 2 - 7:12

Total Running time: 39:52