july 17, 2020 06:36 pm

i’ve been making lists again as suggested by my therapist. things to accomplish through the day. something in front of me to focus on so that the negative thoughts don’t take over. it’s actually been helping a lot. it’s nice starting my morning writing different tasks on a bunch of sticky notes and pressing them to the side of my computer monitor. there’s something really satisfying about getting through one and tearing it off and…i don’t know. i’m feeling okay lately. good and productive and hopeful. i hope anyone out there reading this is feeling the same.

anyway, i wrote a song last week called palindrome. it kind of reminds me of old flatsound. simple, hushed, intimate, and with a heavy focus on the lyrics. i really do love writing lyrics. i’ve been writing a lot of them lately. my life is so much busier now compared to when i started flatsound but in many ways creating art feels the same. when i started i just wanted to prove, above anything else, that i was a good writer. ten years later and i’m just happy that i still have things to say. and melodies in my head, and metaphors that i’m able to find some kind of meaning in.

enjoy the song. i’m eternally grateful for anyone who takes the time to listen to the things i make, and feel endlessly lucky to know that some listen so attentively that they see pieces of themselves in it. thank you.

start the day off with a weight
and stomach pain
turn away
a simple call for subtle change
but every day
feels the same

come to life
valentine
and walk beside me close
come to life
little thoughts of mine
the ones that i love most

i’m walking in circles where my dad
used to stand among the plants and
they’re growing taller than i can
up the wall
over the fence

my hands are high
they grab the vines
and begin to climb the post
why have i begun
where i started from
it’s a palindrome i wrote
i want leaving to feel like
i’m coming home

so i’ve gotta try
i’ll try
i promise to try
because with you and i
in the night
i feel fine
with just you and i
in the night
i feel fine

july 04, 2020 09:14 pm

i’ve been wanting to write here more. which, i know isn’t anything new. most of my time is spent wanting to do more, or wanting to find some type of consistency in something. hoping that one day i wake up and fall into a comfortable pattern. it’s just so easy for me to get swept away in a thought, or a new idea. but lately all i’ve been thinking about is how much comfort exists in familiarity. i don’t want things to feel new, i just want them to feel good.

things have felt off since my father passed. i miss him a lot every day. i haven’t talked about it much, and i guess i don’t really plan to. losing him felt too personal. too big. i did post something very nice about it on his birthday, though. i guess that’s a start. everything is progression in a life shackled in place by a linear timeline, so in a way every minute i spend here is another step forward in grieving. even the steps backwards move us forward in a way we can’t control. but for now, it still hurts, and i don’t know what to do about it except repeat these words in my head: i miss you, dad. i love you, dad. i love you. i love you so much.

things have been good, though. i mean, aside from the overwhelming amount of things that have been bad, i do feel good most of the time. i’m still writing all the time, and recording little things. in june i made this twelve minute instrumental that i’ve been playing in my office a lot while i work. maybe in my search for consistency and forming familiar habits i’ll make a routine of sharing my art here again.

i never go a day without thinking about how lucky i am. neal tells me that i’m on the cusp of something and i think he’s right. i want to see how far these shaking legs will take me.

december 04, 2019 09:23 pm

i’ve been playing with tape loops again recently. there’s something about the analog sound of cassette, the repeated melody and how it grows. or maybe it’s the idea of building something new around something familiar that feels so significant to me right now. whatever the case, yesterday i recorded one of my sessions. i also recorded some video clips from that day, along with footage of the tape actually running to better highlight the interest of this piece.

the gravity of us being here without you is an eight minute improvisational piece performed with a nintendo ds and a broken tape loop. one of the reels came undone and now balances atop the tape beneath it as it continues to spin. no longer supporting the tape, but being supported by it. sometimes weighing it down, sometimes effecting and distorting its tone. and still, though no longer functioning as it did, it’s now complicated role is not burdensome. it adds something special.

your place in my life was only additive. the weight of it all made it beautiful. i love you.

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

listen to the gravity of us being here without you in full.

september 29, 2019 10:55 pm

something very exciting happened the other week. i was looking through an external hard drive and stumbled across a song that i wrote and recorded back in 2015 but never released. initially i didn’t remember much about the song but over the last week more and more has been coming back to me. i remember really liking this song while working on it. the instrumental especially. the way the little synth lick comes in. i wrote and recorded it all in one day, staying up late that night doing vocal takes.

the next day while mixing, the file corrupted and the instrumental disappeared. that was the reason that i put it away and moved onto something else. i told myself that i would come back and try to fix it one day, but eventually enough time passed and i just let the file get buried.

that’s the thing with flatsound songs, i very rarely rerecord them. this is especially true of songs that were written and recorded in a single day. i guess i figure that, when i record a song in a single sitting, i’m not just writing a song. i’m capturing every step of that songs inception, and everything added to that song is a mystery to me right up until i do it. so when something like this happens…that’s kind of it. it’s gone. i lost something that i can’t recreate. that sense of trial and error discovery. the documentation of a song materializing in front of me. it sucks, but when it happens i just call it a loss and move on.

well, something must have happened in that time, because when i opened the file out of sheer curiosity last week it worked just fine. the song was fully intact. i picked up where i left off years ago, but making sure not to change very much and add absolutely nothing. i wanted whatever i recorded back then to be as it was. i listened, finished mixing, and bounced the track.

so here it is, a flatsound song from 2015 that you’ve never heard before. i hope you like it, because i really like it a lot. but, after all this time, i’m just really glad that you’re able to hear it at all. enjoy.

put them up
put your hands up
lift them up
to what you can't touch

in a colosseum
full of weapons that you chose
were you defeated
by a shield you wouldn't hold
i want to protect you
when your hands are turning cold
but i don't think that it's my place
to invite you to my place
anymore

your body knows
the secrets that you never told
they're in your thoughts
i feel them every time we talk

in a colosseum
full of weapons that you chose
were you defeated
by a shield you couldn't hold
i want to be fine
knowing everything i know
but i want to kill him
i'll fucking kill him
if you don't

september 09, 2019 03:22 pm

i still remember every recording. not just the lyrics to each song, but where i was when writing them. where i was sitting, the time of day, the lighting in the room. it all felt very important to me, even before i knew what i was doing. there was never an expectation to succeed, after all. just the unrelenting desire to create something. 

ten years is a long time. enough to forge relationships, and move to different houses, and build a music career from nothing. i had no idea that this album, recorded with distorted microphones attached to tangled wires cluttering a teenage bedroom, would go on to touch so many people. there was so much that i didn't know, resulting in a record colored with all that's left to learn, it's mistakes resting in the hiss.

these songs represent a special period, something that i couldn't replicate today. the opportunity to not know. to stand at the cusp of something new, stare down at what you don't understand, and leap into it.

thank you to the people who saw a piece of themselves in the static. the ones listening in the night time, the ones with "i exist" tattooed into their skin. i see you, and i appreciate you, and i can't thank you enough for what you've given me. not just a career, but a sense of being understood. that's more than i could have ever hoped for.

my first album - scotland, i wish you had stayed - was released ten years ago today. i’m excited to announce that, for the first time ever, it will be available on vinyl. thank you again to everyone who supported and continues to support these early songs. i’m happy that they will finally find a home in someones record collection. variant and release date will be announced soon.

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