With significant involvement in various projects recorded for AltrOck and its sister label, Fading Records, Milan-based composer/guitarist Francesco Zago was able to draw from a roster of many notable musicians for his Empty Days ensemble, which released an eponymous album on AltrOck in late 2013. Recorded in Milan and several other locations in northern Italy, the album reflected two areas of Zago's then-current musical interests: art rock songs with sometimes darkly poetic lyrics, and atmospheric ambient-style compositions. Across the album's total of 14 tracks, each vocal song was followed by an instrumental number, with Zago writing all the music and penning English-language lyrics for three of the seven songs. Zago also played guitar, Mellotron, and bass, and produced and (with Andrea Rizzardo) mixed the album.

To realize his artistic conception for Empty Days, Zago drew from the lineup of AltrOck's flagship ensemble, Yugen, for a number of the musicians involved: Paolo Ske Botta (keyboards), Jacopo Costa (vibes), Maurizio Fasoli (piano), and Giuseppe Olivini (percussion, theremin). While the music of avant-proggers Yugen is often densely composed in the style of a rock-based chamber ensemble, bandmembers Zago, Fasoli, and Olivini were no strangers to ambient music, having contributed deeply ambient sonics to the 2009 AltrOck project Kurai. Six of Empty Days' vocal tracks were sung by American vocalist Elaine di Falco, including not only songs with lyrics penned by Zago but also "In Darkness Let Me Dwell," with lyrics by English Renaissance composer John Dowland; "Running Water," with lyrics by Irish poet and playwright Seamus Heaney; and "A Dark Vanessa," from Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel Pale Fire. Di Falco had previously sung Heaney and Nabokov lyrics for the 2010 Yugen album Iridule. Pat Moonchy, a Milan-based sound/noise artist and improviser, was also considered a member of the core Empty Days ensemble, contributing her "electric zen garden" to the project.

A pair of guest artists were also involved in the recording sessions: mezzo soprano Rachel O'Brien sang lyrics from another -- and notably famous -- Dowland piece, "Flow My Tears"; and cellist Bianca Fervidi played cello on several tracks. Fervidi, a member of the contemporary classical and avant jazz quartet Sonata Islands, appeared on the 2012 AltrOck album Sonata Islands Goes RIO. And touching upon yet another AltrOck project, Empty Days revisited -- more understatedly -- a Zago song first heard on the vintage prog-influenced Not a Good Sign album released earlier in 2013.

The CD booklet for Empty Days included lyrics for all the songs, presented as if excerpted from larger texts with portions redacted (thus subverting original meanings) in the style of British artist Tom Phillips' A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel. In fact, the title of the disc's final track (an ambient piece), "This Night Wounds Time," was derived from a fragment of A Humument also used in the album artwork for King Crimson's 1974 album Starless and Bible Black.

In September and October of 2013, a touring ensemble of Empty Days hit the road for concert appearances in northern Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. The "Empty Tour" group consisted of Zago, Fasoli, di Falco, Botta, Olivini, and Costa. ~ Dave Lynch, Rovi