2026 Releases

In 2026, I’ve released (or am planning to release if it is a future date) the following new music on all digital music streaming platforms under the artist name “Kevin Ott”:

1. Home Above (full-length album) - 1/1

2. Arctic Compass (full-length album) - 1/6

3. Countersuit (full-length album) - 2/6

4. Crown of Labyrinths (full-length album) - 3/3

5. There With You (full-length album) - 4/5

6. Welcome to Saint Anne’s (a full-length album that explores the C. S. Lewis 1945 space fiction book That Hideous Strength) - 4/22

7. Mellow Spaces (full-length album) - 6/11

8. Summer Stars Unbound (full-length album) - 7/20

9. Sardonyx Torch (double full-length album) - 11/3 (Election Day in the USA)

10. The Torch is Lit (single) - 11/8 (84th anniversary of Operation Torch’s D-Day — the day that Operation Torch began when the Allied Forces attacked the Axis in North Africa in WWII)

The first four albums are concept albums telling a single narrative taken from a novel I’ve been working on in recent years.

The fifth album, “There With You,” leaves that narrative concept album project and begins fresh with a mix of new themes.

The sixth album, as mentioned above, loosely explores the themes, settings, situations, and characters of the C. S. Lewis 1945 space fiction book That Hideous Strength — Book 3 in his beloved Space Trilogy and one of my favorite books.

The seventh album, “Mellow Spaces,” fulfills a goal I’ve always wanted to achieve: compose and record a full-length album made entirely of mellow songs with slow tempos. Only one track is the exception on this album: track 5, “When the Heavens Rend.” Although it uses a faster tempo, it still operates within a mellow sonic environment. The process of creating this seventh album has been a refuge in itself — a creative harbor that has provided stress relief and quiet rest within the mellow world of each track. Here’s a fun fact about this album: track 7 (“Long Empty Valley”) is in the time signature 5/4, one of my favorite off-time signatures for songwriting.

The eight album, “Summer Stars Unbound,” is another style of album I’ve always wanted to do: 100% EDM and synthesizer-based. No mic-recorded guitars and bass lines in this one, just a digital piano run through various synth processing, drum machine programming, and a microphone for recording vocals. A large amount of the synth work is inspired by the soundtracks from the three Tron films (some of my favorite films and soundtracks of all time).

The ninth album, “Sardonyx Torch,” is a re-release of the April 22, 2024 album “Sardonyx” but with new tracks added (some of my favorite songs from 2026 that add some interesting new layers to 2024’s “Sardonyx”) and interspersed into the original song order. This album also features one new original song called “The Torch Is Lit,” a reimagined version of “Flight of the Time Benders” called “Flight of the Time Benders for Operation Torch,” and a remastered version of “Postlude to the Flight of the Time Benders.”

The tenth release is the single release for the new original song “The Torch Is Lit.”

The album covers for the 9th and 10th releases each feature an original photo I took of the Northern Lights as seen from the northeast area of the US on May 10, 2024.

Below you can see the cover art for these albums.