releases

 
 

Geometry

This is the first thing I ever really officially released as a solo artist. A few of these songs came out of writing exercises that prescribed conditions in form, timbre, or instrumentation, among other things - a set of challenges. The rest were just me casting about without a band figuring out how to make everything myself. This was an exploration I really enjoyed, and I was lucky enough to have some of my music friends from Boise and Florida contribute parts to various songs.

 

SEttle

I debuted this one at Treefort 2019 and shortly after released it as a single. This was a lot of fun - one of the only songs I have where I had the song ready for performance before there was any sort of full demo recorded. I went into this one trying to write something a little more streamlined and straight ahead than my last stuff and let it happen a bit more organically. It’s rounded out by a guest solo from an old bandmate.

 

Diagonal Lines

This is another orphan single from the period in 2019 where I’d just started playing shows and was filling out my set as I got more time. This is one of my favorites - it started out as a challenge to myself to make a song in odd time (7/8 and 5/8) with an indefinite key center and still make it listenable to somebody who isn’t actively looking for weird music shenanigans. Did I succeed? You tell me. I like it. Had a buddy add in some acoustic drums on top of the drum machines on this and it really made it smack.

 

Wooden Palace

This one’s special to me. It’s a split EP with my good friend and old bandmate Brian Squillace, who produces under the name Odd Relics (as well as being involved in several other excellent music projects, LANNDS and Yuno.) In 2018 he came out from Florida for an intense five-day writing session with the intention being some sort of joint release and the general rule that we had to get all the principal parts of it down while he was here. It emerged organically that some songs were more mine, and some more his, so we each took ownership of a few proto-songs and developed them further individually, while still inviting the other to collaborate on any elements where it made sense. It was a wonderfully fun exercise that forced both of us to grow a bit, since our processes differ in a few key areas, and I love how it turned out.

 

Afterglow

This is the first song from the collection that I wrote starting in December 2020 and continued working on throughout 2021. The song itself is about dealing with unavoidable tragedy you can see coming miles away but can’t do anything to avoid. It’s got some drums sampled from a Sea Cycles song, played originally by my friend Josh Wessolowski, and amazing original artwork by Justin Buss, who will be a continual collaborator for this series.

 

Dying Flame

This song is fun - it started out as another song entirely. It was an ambient piece I was working on that hit a dead end, so one day I decided to chop it up and rearrange it into an entirely different piece. This laid a cool bedrock of interesting textures and chords to build further upon, and the end result became a fully realized and independent work. In addition the the chopping I had a lot of fun with sampling my piano and even snuck a pretty killer guitar solo in, if I do say so myself. (And I do say so.)