Below is an excerpt from Nels Cline’s extended notes on his new record Coward.

“Coward” is meant to be a journey, bookended by minimal drone pieces named after infrequently-blooming flowers, and, in between, taking you on a trip – sometimes a wry, whimsical, or solemn one – through this string of references, of inside jokes, and of tributes to friends, artists, and to pools of feeling that are a

t once personal and (with any luck) universal, pertaining to love, alienation, things sublime and perverse…

Be sure to check out Nate Chinen’s review of Coward at nytimes.com.