Roger O’Donnell has always moved in slow revolutions, and never in a straight path. He began as a restless teenager in London’s East End, “born next to the piano and never moved very far away from one,” playing cabaret clubs and making a living however possible. A chance meeting with drummer Boris Williams led him to the Thompson Twins, then the Psychedelic Furs, and ultimately to The Cure, where his keyboards became central to Disintegration —an album that reshaped the emotional vocabulary of pop and alternative rock.
His new solo record, Projections, which arrived on October 29 (his birthday), sounds like a measured breath drawn after decades of noise. It is both an extension and an examination: a tracing of lines back through half a century spent at keyboards, stages, and soundboards.
During 2023, Roger was diagnosed with lymphoma, which made him stop and ruminate over his experiences and achievements over the last five decades. That breadth of history is felt in Projections. It’s his third electronic album, following The Truth in Me (2006) and Songs from the Silver Box (2010), and his first in fifteen years to center the Moog Voyager and Rhodes piano.
The record sounds like an artist revisiting old languages: fluent but unhurried, folding memory into machinery. “I love working with the cello,” he’s said before, “it just resonates with me and is the perfect accompaniment or lead to the piano.” Here, he sets the cello aside in favor of textures that hum with a quiet pulse; compositions that suggest film reels, distant skylines, and private sketches.
He is joined again by longtime collaborator Alka, who contributes beats and synths with a precision O’Donnell calls instinctive. “I get a song finished with a guide rhythm track and just send it over to Philadelphia and wait for what comes back,” he explains. “He always says of course you don’t have to use everything, but I always do.” Their partnership gives the album its mechanical, yet deeply emotional, pulse.
Mastered in analogue by Guy Davie at Electric Mastering and released in Dolby Atmos, Projections takes its title literally. Each composition seems to cast an image outward: hotel corridors, stage lights, passing cities through tour bus glass. It is music both remembered and reimagined, a quiet reckoning with time, illness, and endurance. Projections captures the sound of dogged, if quiet, persistence.
A companion video for the title track translates this reflection into imagery. Edited by Mimi Supernova, it combines years of handheld footage—tour buses, hotel rooms, highways, graffiti, and fleeting faces—into a travelogue of a life spent in transit. The video also features studio and music video clips, notably The Cure’s music video shoot for “Pictures of You.” It also carries a dedication to the late Mars Williams, “a larger-than-life character and an amazing musician,” whose presence lingers in the passing scenery. This visual presentation serves as a fitting analogy: Projections feels like a diary written without words, with its entries expressed through melody and light.
Watch the video below:
Projections is out now. Order here.
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