"Continent" appears on the new Schleigho release of the same name. Songwriter Suke Cerulo (guitar, flute), describes the origins of its composition and reveals a bit of his musical ethos:

"Continent is the title track off of our newest CD. I wrote it at the same time I was writing "Red Tape" (off of the same album)- that was in the late spring of 1999. I intended to write a song with a melody first, something that flowed and moved. I didn't want to constrain myself to chords and time, just a melody. This is the guitar melody at the beginning and end of the tune. It was sort of an Ornette Coleman approach, but I later figured out what harmony I wanted under it along with a few kicks. The middle two sections of the tune are similar in phrase but much different in feel. The first is in 9/4 and is a straight up swing groove that I play a flute solo over. It has a similar feel to Duke Ellington's "Caravan". The song quickly moves into the piano solo. This section has the same phrase as the Flute solo, but we change keys and shorten it by a beat to be in 4/4 time. The feel of this section is acoustic jungle jazz. It becomes very tribal and retains its organic vibe.

As a writer and composer it's always a challenge to bring new things to front. I want to move people, to relate to situations that they feel, beyond any words. Music is so precious, completely intangible, it speaks to all. That's why I almost always have written instrumentals, words can be too literal. I don't intend to be being a storyteller in the strict sense of the word. This is how I differ as a writer because I don't sit down and try to write a specific song about love that went sour or about my dog, I'll leave that to country music. I'll maybe start with a musical guideline, to keep me fresh and keep the originality of my own tunes moving. Next I try to let go of my surroundings and myself and let it out. A lot of the time what happens is the tunes write themselves. Sometimes it takes me a little while to get used to what I'm writing. They flower over time and become their own color, I can then put them together best I can and bring it to the guys to learn. Even then it changes drastically to fit our sound, each of us (Erik, Jesse, Paco and I) add a very distinct "sound" to our originals. For us in Schleigho it's always fun to have a song like Continent that encompasses prewritten material and sections we can blow solos over.

Listen to Continent