EP II

I think many people might ask or wonder, why did this take so long? The short answer is, for years I was hoarding music, convinced that nothing was good enough. It’s taken a lot of work to get to the point where I’m truly confident in myself and feel I have the skills to do this without fear. A dumb amount of work. You must remember that, I do this all by myself. Every note and every beat comes from my hand. Every waveform is woven by me. I’m glad I took the time to get here, though. I think, trying to push myself too early would’ve been the wrong move. I always want to approach this thing I love to do in a sustainable fashion, because confidence or not, making music can be very difficult, and I’d rather grow and reach the next step with ease rather than reach and fall off completely. That, however, is just me. Hmmm…

It is 2018. It is many nights fused into one, and the air hangs heavy. I don’t quite know what I’m doing, but I have made strides. These songs were born in a place like this and carry that feel with them still. Let’s talk about them.

ISMIU

COLORS:

I See Myself In U. I have always been a more introverted person. I don’t always have the energy to be around other people. In 2018 I am wondering if people understand that about me, or take it personally. I wonder if they see themselves in me. Sometimes (read: maybe more than you think) I’ll write a song that’s not exactly about anything real, at least directly. As an introvert, I spent a lot of time working on things by myself and for this reason my index of life experiences is not always brimming with situations worth singing about. So, sometimes I will make stuff up. But often I’ll write about things that I wish had happened, feelings that I wish I’d felt, times I wish I’d been through, things I wish I’d seen. A great longing that bursts at the seams. ISMIU is something I wish to feel. I wish that I could look to a person and see myself. Would that there were a person who, simply by virtue of existing, could recharge the deep circuits of my being. I have a feeling that I am assuming too enthusiastically that most people have this person in their lives. Maybe we are all longing. 

FINAL THOUGHT

COLORS: 

Bluer than blue… This one comes from a genuine place. Confusion, longing, frustration, all of these feelings were integral to creating this track. It’s a bit all over the place, in that it is approximately 3 songs in one, each one having a dominating theme. The first part, one of my early attempts at approaching some form of RnB, is half “I can’t even” and half “sad boy hours”. I get every shade of blue, from ultramarines to frozen glacial, in this part of the song. Two different mics were used to record the vocals in this part, see if you can’t try to discern where the switch comes in. 

The second portion of this song, which feels slower than the first, but is actually 2% faster BPM wise, is one of my first forays into “less is more”. I tried to do a lot less than I had been used to at that point, and really just focus on simplicity. Part II is about longing, what about my heart? What about it? Floating, floating, floating. It’s hard to tell you’re moving in the void, but for the flecks of stardust falling by and around you. I officially moved away from recording primarily on the shure sm7b on this one and moved to a Nuemann. You can hear the background vocal overdubs in this part on the Neumann, they sound a lot cleaner to my ear. It’s weird because, a lot of the quality of my music comes from mistakes. The texture that comes from two different mics was not a conscious decision, but it gives something extra to the final thing that I like. 

The second portion melts into the third and final Pink Moon Redux Thesis. Or, fuck all that mess I’m gonna take a night walk and let my sadness filter out. Black and red dominate this part, with shades of whatever sonic embers or emotional flames that weave in and out of its waveform. The call and response fades into some very raw and quiet vocals that I very much debated removing in favor of a clean fade out, but in the end, it felt right to leave my final thoughts intact.

JOHNNY BOY

COLORS:

So, Johnny boy… Should it be Jonny Boy? That doesn’t feel right to me, despite its proximity to my name. This song, originally appended to the end of ISMIU as a “beat switch”, I decided deserved to live on its own. It felt slightly too jarring behind the 70s psych soul slow jam. Though, in all honesty, I think I just wanted to make it easier to access these sounds rather than have them hidden 5 minutes into another song. 

Show ‘em you aint painted black, Shadowfax, show ‘em the meaning of haste. 

I love that line. 

This track is a decompression. I truly did not want to hear a sound at the point when I recorded that line. My ears were so tired, I was malnourished, and generally speaking, burnt out. Listening now, It feels like a helicopter flyover of my mental state, feeling like I was wasting a lot of time and ignoring a lot of people for the sake of pursuing this and that; I found myself trying to simply take stock of where I was in life, whether I would regret doing all of this. I think it was worth it in the end. 

₍₍ (ง ˘ω˘ )ว ⁾⁾

Yours truly, forevermore. 

L.