The Compass is the one true love song in the Aria Bloom canon up until this point, a song I originally wrote in a time of extreme displacement and of yearning for a home, for a safe haven, which at the time I believed to be located somewhere and sometime within my past, but which, deep down, I knew would have to lie ahead of me, probably indefinitely, like a constellation in the sky, destined forever for the role of a guiding light. With the passing of time, it has become a song about acceptance and reverence towards the past while moving on, about knowing what's over and done with, and what's yet to come, and about knowing East from West, and North from South.

This song would in no way be possible as you see and hear it, without a handful of friends and collaborators: Johnny Migliorelli AKA Casa Apapache was with me all the way, from beginning to end, and was the drive behind it all; without his producer's foresight and vision, I might not have even conceded to undertaking the song's reinvention, and without his presence behind the desk, I do not think we would have gotten the vocal takes we did. He sifted through endless tracks in the mixing process, and made sense of it all in the most graceful and faithful way possible, all the way down to the final master. He is, to all effects, the glue behind The Compass. Malanima was the only other musician on the track, and made the song his own, with exemplary commitment and heart on the Spanish guitar, taking it places I could not have on my own. Iris Medina read through my ideas for the cover artwork design, and guided the project to its final visual representation. Aarón Baeza Cerriteño indulged me in a photoshoot in the Istrian wilderness, whose pictures include the one used in this post, and helped me shed my skin, uncovering new colours for Aria Bloom. I am grateful that I could share the journey of making it with these people. I hope that you may share the journey as a listener as well.