I am about to undertake a rare event. The Eric Van Aro Quartet are not merely releasing an album; we are resurrecting a ghost. This is my profound journey back to the source.

I grew up surrounded by the warm hiss of tape machines and the sacred ritual of the live take. My career has navigated jazz, rock, Latin rhythms, and electronic music, but I have always been pulled by a deeper current. That current leads me home.

Now, in my most personal project, I am shedding the modern studio entirely. No overdubs, no click tracks, no digital safety net. This is my music, laid bare.

The repertoire is my sonic autobiography. I have privately cataloged songs I call “waky”—pieces that feel timeless, slightly warped by memory, rich with the patina of a life lived. These are the forgotten B-sides of my experience, the haunting melodies heard on late-night radio, the standards reinterpreted, the original tunes that never fit a genre but never left my soul.

I have gathered these “waky” gems—from jaunty jazz to melancholic rock ballads—to be captured in a single, continuous performance. This is not a rejection of my eclectic past, but its distillation. It is me going back to the root: the terrifying and glorious act of creating something beautiful, together, in real time.