Former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder announces debut album, Metanoia

Over three days in late 2021, during pandemic social distancing, Schroeder performed solo, improvised guitar instrumentals as part of an outdoor art installation at Toronto’s Fort York. In front of a massive LED wall of shifting gradients and color, Schroeder’s guitar improvisations filled a public space, in dialogue with art and scenery, as part of a series of works titled “The Awakenings Project.” He did not listen back to the recordings until March 2024.

“It does feel quite vulnerable at times because there are those that expect you to have a master plan, and making any mistakes makes you look foolish or misguided,” Schroeder said. “I don’t think it’s all inner critic discourse. Some of these voices are real, and that is a dimension of this part of my life that I am learning to negotiate because it certainly has an impact on the artistic process.”

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“Sound as itself, without the imposition of human categories of interpretation, can provide a space of alterity or otherness than the ones we tend to live as we go about our daily lives,” Schroeder said. “When we think about how in our current culture even the most private aspects of our existence have become available as data to be traded and sold, creating these spaces outside of that framework—even if temporary—is important to me.”

Metanoia, then, is a reminder that while the action of creating art is only a moment, the true nature of an artwork can transform with its listeners. The album asks of us what it asked of its artist: Look inward. And look elsewhere.