New Dawn” is the second album from Canadian band Stranded and it was released on 19th July by Escape Music, some 20 years after the first album. Only vocalist Troy Reid remains from the initial album and the driving force behind this release would seem to be multi-instrumentalist Lewis Nitikman. The album is probably about as AOR/melodic as I would tend to listen to, but it is definitely a great example of that genre. The track “Not Enough Sorry” was included on the Friday NI Rocks Show on 5th July.


The first Stranded album was “Long Way to Heaven” which was released by Escape Music in 1999. It featured Troy Reid who was the singer with Canadian melodic rock band Agent on their second album “Evidence” (released by Escape Music in 1998).


Jumping forward to 2019, “New Dawn” features eleven tracks that had been written by Lewis Nitikman over many years, collaborating with a number of other writers. Nitikman had been the keyboard player for Canadian band Stonebolt on their last album “Juvenile American Princess” in 1982 and went on to work as a pianist, songwriter and teacher. He worked quite a bit with John Reilly from the band Boy on a Dolphin. Nitikman plays guitar, keyboards, drums and bass on the album as well as producing it.


In addition to Reid and Nitikman, the album features Stonebolt guitarist Ray Roper and additional guitars from Bill Buckingham who also mixed the tracks.


About “NI Rocks Recommends”

The simple idea behind “NI Rocks Recommends” is to acknowledge and promote some of the great music being submitted to Rock Radio NI. The albums that I’ll be recommending are those that you’ll hear me playing tracks from on my shows. I'll not be giving marks or ratings or analyzing the tracks in great detail; just telling you something about the artist and the album. It’s a personal recommendation to go check something out, not a traditional “review”!