Artist Biography

Dave Palermo (keyboards, percussion, vocals) has been a working musician for over 15 years. Starting in college, Dave played in clubs around the Pittsburgh area with his band Territories, performing mostly original rock material. This culminated in an album of songs written during that period, before the group broke up to get themselves situated in their careers after graduation.

Dave has played in several bands since, and more recently has begun recording as a solo artist in the electronic/ambient style.

Dave has always written music. Since 2006, he has recorded 2 albums, PHOTOMETRY and IDEATION, both of which contain instrumental music played on keyboards in the progressive ambient style. Dave has loved ambient music for many years and is influenced by such modern ambient and progressive artists as Jonn Serrie, Steve Roach, Forrest Fang, Jean Michel Jarre, Patrick O'Hearn, Brian Eno, and Biosphere, as well as various rock, prog rock, jazz, and pop artists.

"Listening to many ambient artists as well as great artists from other genres has helped to give me the desire to express ideas with music," Dave remarks.

Photometry is the first album Dave recorded using Reason recording software. It's a CD composed of songs ranging from minimal atmospheric pieces, to more complex melodic tracks. The title is derived from the term used to describe the science of measuring light. Specifically, photometry is defined as the precision measurement of the brightness, color, and spectrum of stars and other celestial objects to obtain data on their structure, temperature, and composition. Dave explains that "we can think of photometry as a way of listening to music if we think of the notes as different brightnesses/colors of light which we measure to interpret the composition of the song."
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Ideation has followed Photometry in the same tradition, only this time expanding on a multi-instrumental approach introduced by songs like "Underground" from Photometry. Percussion loops, bass lines, and melodic synth leads are present in several tracks on Ideation. However there are also pure ambient synth tracks, this time with greater depth and using some new sounds and textures not featured on Photometry. "I wanted this CD to expand on the best of both worlds. There are open, spacial tracks, but also more arrangement-heavy tracks with percussion and traditional melody lines, and I'm proud of the results from both approaches," Dave explains.

As for the title: "Writing music is basically a process of forming and relating ideas so I wanted to acknowledge this by calling the CD Ideation."

Come explore the next chapter of Dave's music with Ideation.

Artist Mission

Music Influences

Alternative Links

• Dave Palermo Official Site