This entry begins with a recording of nighttime park ambiance. It was originally recorded for GREENER GRASS AWAITS, but the sound didn't fit the game. A train is heard- a recording I made in Martinez.

dislocate and destroy

it's all, dissolved, in fall

there's no one else to call

A synth track.

 The poison comes from our worst impulses

"it stands to reason, there's no reason to stand"

"it's all going to plan"

one day i'll wake up somewhere else 

one day i'll wake up somewhere else 

one day i'll wake up somewhere else

This entry begins with a recording of rain dying down as I was seated in my car. Mostly synths otherwise.

On the road again

Slip in and out my friend

I can't remember where I turn

And I can't control my face

Just can't hold on these days

A life of letting go. And

There's something better than whatever we have here

Yeah there's something burning bright

There's something lighter than the weight of all these years

Yeah there's stairs to another life

This entry began its life as an attempt to make a song for my apple selling game. It didn't fit the mood.

Have you ever seen a pool so deep

so warm and everything

it's screaming your name

screaming your name

won't you get in and swim

it's calling your name

calling your name

won't you get in and swim

do you see it now

when you're on your own

can you get into your life

do you see it now

when you're on your own

do you see it now

And the sky is not yellow

It's orange, the end, it's fine

And the sky is not yellow

It's orange the end of time

As you watch the world's turning

You know you're out of time

do you see it now

and the sky's not yellow

when you're on your own

it's just blood orange

can you get into your life

and it's fine

do you see it now

and the sky's not yellow

when you're on your own

it's just blood orange

and it's fine

do you see it now 

I think the original motive behind this track was to create something where I was trying to do something unambiguously beautiful. When I make music, I feel like I sometime struggle with choosing a top-down aesthetic that informs the track, and I end up with something in between. All synth besides that vinyl loop!

I think I made this shortly after releasing SPLIT WHOLE. I wanted to create a track that leaned more on vocal melody over switching chords in the instrumental. Lyrically, I wanted to involve the use of more imagery, rather than the more literal statements like I felt like I'd been writing up to this point.

I am talking about a specific song on this track 🥸

Enter

Sit down

See the fragments littered in the rug

Match burnt fingers pick them up

Piece them, need them, no surprise

Secret message in my eyes

My favorite song is playing in the car

I sing along and mean it bar for bar

My favorite song is playing in the car

I sing along and mean it bar for bar

All these cars keep passing by

All these cars keep flashing 

On the hillside, watching, walking under low grey skies

Grasses wave and pass me by

Loop around the trail and find

My car parked in the car park fine

Driving home so don't ask why

My favorite song is playing in the car

I sing along and mean it bar for bar

My favorite song is playing in the car

I sing along and mean it bar for bar

Another dreamy track as break from the terrifying world and the normally scheduled dreary. 

I've sat on this song for like 2-3 years now, and remembered that it's actually a perfect fit for the audio document series. I think it sounds like remembering the orange afternoons of just a few years ago. 

This was meant to be on my album SPLIT WHOLE at one point, but was kicked because it was unlike any other track on the album. 

I initially wrote this for a game but realized it wasn't the right mood, so I shifted it into a test for myself to try writing lyrics from the perspective of a character. this sound palette also inspired another track, called plateau, which is unreleased.

but on my website you can find a link to it HERE

It's pretty rough around the edges as it was paused for this song. it does have some fun key things that i recorded on a huge old casio keyboard i also used for some stuff in GREENER GRASS AWAITS.

tell my friends i made it farther than before

i took my boat and sailed to lands never seen before

and all my family waved as i kicked off from the shore

but no one even saw as i kicked off from the shore

tell the world i'm waiting, waiting for the world

i took my boat and crashed it, washed up on a board

and all this land is barren, there's no one not a soul

so fly now from this island and tell them what you know

tell my friends i made it

all my family waved

tell my friends i made it

all my family waved

a track i've been kicking around that i re-recorded in a very impromptu way. impromptu for me at least- i didn't use any sort of tempo keeping thing and just felt my way though the performance. it's all build off of one recording i did where i just had my mic recording my electric guitar that was not plugged. i think this is a tricky track for a few reasons- i struggle with how and how often to present this kind of sadness in art.

i use a lot of crunchy audio distortion in the track to sort of emulate it being recorded on analog equipment, but it's all digital effects. it's interesting to think about the aesthetics of sadness in audio, since I usually associate something raw and crunchy with negative emotion. technically, the most raw you could get is just using the recordings straight out of the microphone. it would sound very clean, and kind of bad and probably not in an interesting way. so the solution is to counterintuitively put more effort in to fake the analog crunch sound? weird!

(side note, but my favorite "sad" album, purple mountains, actually sounds very nice and produced so i probably should think about it more. also calling it a "sad" album feels reductionist)

in the end, i have decided to release this as an audio document.

I think I get the vibe

In the air tonight

I know what to do

But can I make it true

Maybe it's alright

If I leave the room

It's been long enough

It was overdue

So whisper sweet and slowly

And tell me that you know a way

to let it all go free

but after everything we've been through

I still haven't found the nerve in me

to let it all go free

I'll see you soon

This track was built off of two recordings, one of a arcade and the other of some nearby construction. I ran the first one through comb filters to see what would happen and the other one i just had to pitch and it just made a good bass. eventually it all ended up with this track. It was a test to see what my ears could lead me too when I start with far more unusual starts.

When I sing lyrics for something I just string random words together. Usually the words vaguely point to some sort of personal meaning, and from there I refine it. In a few of these Audio documents, including this one, I just leave the words mostly untouched and see how it feels. 

An example of this is the line "it's coming down the road again". The feeling I was trying to word was the hope that something new and good would come down the road, but instead I phrased it as a more resigned statement. It might be expressing my disbelief with the current goings-ons, both personal or political.

A digression, but it's funny to me how a lot of songwriting can be very collage-esque, kind of just pairing together a lot of slogans and one liners. One band that really opened my eyes to this is The Killers- It felt like the writing was trying to sloganeer its way into of meaning.

So long, savor

Take on what you cannot favor

So long, savor

Take on what you cannot favor

So long

So

So long

So

It's coming down the road again

It's coming down the road again

It's coming down the road again

It's coming down the road again

It's coming down the road again

It's coming down the road again

So long, savor

Take on what you cannot favor

So long, savor

Take on what you cannot favor

So long, savor

Take on what you cannot favor

So long, savor

Take on what you cannot favor

So long

So

Take on

Take

So long

So

Take on

Take