Biography

In January 2020, shortly before the coronavirus shut down modern life, including travel, Page McConnell took a rare, road trip that had nothing to do with his regular itinerary as the keyboard player in Phish: a holiday in Iceland. Inevitably, music got made there. But it was unlike anything McConnell had recorded before as a solo artist, in side projects or within the collaborative energies of Phish: fully electronic pieces created on location, in response to the epic landscapes, dramatic weather and geologic fury that he experienced in Iceland. He also came back energized and determined to keep going amid, indeed despite, lockdown. Maybe We're the Visitors is the result: an imaginary voyage charged with eyewitness awe and intense, solitary reflection; expressed without lyrics, vocals or any sign of piano, organ or clavinet, McConnell's signature armory with Phish. The album is his third solo outing – following 2007's song-based Page McConnell and a 2013 instrumental release, Unsung Cities and Movies Never Made – and a genuine breakthrough: the first McConnell has conceived and performed entirely with synthesizers. The narrative flow of Maybe We're the Visitors – exploration, colony and, finally warning; that, as Icelanders already know, we are only stewards here and nature always has the last word – did not present itself "until I was close to the end," McConnell confesses. "But I always knew there was something alien about these pieces..."