News & goings on: July 2024

Assorted mid-year updates

This is a slight deviation from the more technical Sound Methods fare, but I thought I’d offer a mid-year update on works in progress and other news. Here’s the rundown:

1. Six months since Where Substance Meets Emptiness was released!

2. I remixed Olma & Mike Grigoni and Alaskan Tapes, and played bass guitar on a new Orcas record out next week.

3. Thinking about moving my Bandcamp subscription service here, instead.

4. I made a mix of music I’m loving.

5. A peek into a recent trip to Portugal.

Read on below…

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A half birthday for Where Substance Meets Emptiness

It’s hard to believe that 6 months have passed since the January release of my last album, Where Substance Meets Emptiness, on Las Vegas-based label Mystery Circles. I have a nasty tendency to “memory hole” my work immediately after it’s out in the world, but I have to admit that there’s something different about this record that lodged it in my mind a little more firmly and comfortably than most of the things I’ve worked on in recent years. I’m actually…proud of it??

All jokes aside, I really do love this album. It’s mostly sold out of physical editions but you can give it a go with a digital download on Bandcamp or stream it wherever you do such things. Huge thanks to everyone who has picked it up, sent me nice messages about it, reviewed it (like here on Bandcamp’s “Best Ambient"), played it on their radio show, added it to a playlist or mix (like this fantastic sleep-focused mix from the folks at Ghostly International), or sent any other kind and positive vibes related to it. I sincerely appreciate all the support.

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Recent remixes and appearances

As fate would have it, three separate collaborative projects I worked on over the last 2 years all decided to emerge this summer. Here they are in order of oldest start date to newest:

1. ORCAS: Back in 2022, I made the trek up to New York to visit with my friend and go-to mastering engineer, Rafael Anton Irisarri, and record bass guitar for his Orcas project with Benoît Pioulard. At long last, their first new album in 10 years, How to Color a Thousand Mistakes, is coming out on July 19 through Morr Music.

   

   

   Photos from the Orcas session at Black Knoll Studio, April 2022

   I love these guys and it was so fun to play on two tracks for them - “Bruise” and “Heavens Despite.” It was even cooler to do it alongside drum kits that were powered by Simon Scott (Slowdive) and Dahm Cipolla (Mono). Some of the drums I was tracking to were originally recorded by Simon back in 2019 immediately following a UK tour with him, which included a Cafe Oto show with Raf. The whole thing felt very “full circle” and serendipitous and I’m so glad to see their hard work finally come to fruition here.

   
   Check out the preview tracks now, and pre-order the album ahead of the July 19 release:

2. OLMA & MICHAEL GRIGONI: In 2023, I worked up a special remix for my friend and frequent collaborator Chris Bartels, writing under his Olma moniker. He and Mike Grigoni (past work on 12k) released a beautiful album of atmospheric acoustic and slide guitar called Tusk II, and I had the pleasure of remixing the track “Lander” for them. You can stream it wherever music is streamed.
   
   Chris and I have a lot more music cooking together right now, but you can also check out our past albums Duets on Fluid Audio and Midnight Letters on Past Inside the Present.

3. ALASKAN TAPES: I’ve been a fan of Brady’s music for a long time, and in recent years have gotten to know him on a more personal level through some shared labels, collaborative projects, and mutual friends. He approached me earlier this year to remix a track called “Wait” off of his beautiful forthcoming record for Nettwerk, called Something Ephemeral, and I’m super happy with the result.
   
   I originally gave him a fairly bombastic and aggressive mix of his original stems, but in typical Alaskan Tapes fashion he was able to massage my overdriven textures and samples into something far more beautiful and focused. I highly recommend a preorder of the album:

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Bandcamp subscription (and thoughts on moving it here)

Just before New Year’s Day 2023, I kicked off a subscription offering on my Bandcamp page to offer one-off tracks, EPs, and demos left over from my personal archive on a monthly basis. I’ve had a lot of fun doing this over the last year and a half, and a fairly sizable catalog of material has developed there over time. Thank you to those of you who support me this way - the difference each month is actually quite tangible and impactful!

I’m thinking about my next steps with this service, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this: if I were to merge the Bandcamp subscription service into this Substack by offering exclusive monthly tracks to paid subscribers here, at exactly the same delivery frequency and price as I was doing on Bandcamp, would that be something of interest to you?

In essence, I’d just be publishing exclusive monthly posts here with a direct link to digital files and/or download codes to private Bandcamp albums, along with detailed write-ups, back story, and context for them.

I’m thinking about this because:

• I’d like to simplify my online footprint, and I don’t really like the idea of managing and pushing 2 separate subscription services in a time defined for so many by “subscription fatigue.” I’m getting more sensitive to that.

• I think Bandcamp’s social/community aspect is valuable for publicly available music, but less so for private and exclusive work.

• Bandcamp is also limited in the accompanying materials it lets you package with the music you upload; here, I can offer far more context and insight to these creations with text, images, video and audio.

• I also see this as a way to make life easier for everyone by just collecting everything I offer here: writing, podcasts, and exclusive music.

I’d say that I’m more than 50% of the way to having already made up my mind on this, but I would like to hear from anyone who thinks this would be a bad idea. I’m not afraid to change my mind when presented with compelling data and reasoning!

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Music I’m loving

Here’s a mix I put together for myself a few months ago that may offer some insight into where my head’s at these days and what’s inspiring me in my own work. I find myself gravitating to aura and texture more than any single structured element in a song these days. I don’t know why I do this, but when I cue up a track, I mentally “step back” and try to take in the whole picture and feel of a song rather than letting myself get caught up in any specific element about it. This would probably be the equivalent of me listening to someone’s tone and timbre in a conversation, but ignoring every word they said. It’s only on repeat listens that I start going deeper and attempt to identify the specific aspects and moments of the song that I enjoy. Again…I don’t know why I do this. It’s just the way my brain is.

Anyway, these tracks all sound very evocative and inspiring to my ear, and I find them fascinating for reasons I can’t necessarily describe. They make me take a wide-angle view of the world whenever I listen.

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Photos from Portugal

Last month, my wife and I took the twins - now 9 months old! - on a trip to Portugal. We visited Lisbon and the Algarve (with a home base in Lagos). Miraculously, the kids behaved on all of our plane, train and automobile rides, and the whole thing went far more smoothly than I expected. Prior to the trip, I was stressing hard about this…so it was a huge relief that they adjusted so well.

We were very active travelers before kids entered the picture, so it also felt like a relief just to get out of the house again after years of restrictions and burnout from work and life. For whatever reason, Portugal had always been on my “sounds interesting but I’ll save it for another time” list while we ticked off more exotic trips on our wishlist, but I’m glad we finally did this journey. I was blown away by the place.

I took my trusty Ricoh GRIII with me and snapped a ton of photos along the way (which I am still learning to do better). Here’s a sampling.

Thanks, as always, for reading and supporting!