Special ALBUM announcement
"The Ceiling Reposes", out March 10th on American Dreams Records-- pre-order, first single + some thoughts
Hi buddies,
I’m breaking my monthly newsletter rule to tell you that I have a solo album coming out on March 10th on American Dreams Records! I started this record at a residency on Vashon Island, WA in November 2021, and continued working on it throughout last spring in Chicago and in New Orleans, so I’m very excited to finally share it.
TL:DR — You can listen to the first single and pre-order it here.
About the music: While on Vashon — a lovely, tiny little island across the water from Seattle — I took hours of live radio samples: ads, talk shows, music, and static. From there I choose select moments and braided them in with other musical elements: cello, synths, kazoo, drums, bells, and field recordings.
If you’ve seen me perform live in the last year, you know that I’ve been using the radio as an instrument in both improvised and composed contexts. I love it’s aleatoric quality — you never know what you’re going to get when you turn that dial. It feels a bit mystical to me; like a version of divination where I’m not trying to tell the future, just to listen.
There are more thoughts about the music in the album description on bandcamp here.
About the first single: along with announcing the album I’m sharing sit on the floor and wait for storms, which is track two. This track contains fragments of a weather report which, transcribed, make the bones of a lovely and strange little poem. I asked a group of poets and lyricists to flesh out these bones, adding their own words in the spaces between the existing text (you’ll see what I mean if you click through). I’m sharing a few of the poems now, here, and you can experience the whole project in the form of a little zine when the album comes out. I am so grateful to Kurt Chiang, Alyssa Martinez, Elizabeth Metzger, Corey Smith, Macie Stewart, Marvin Tate, Andrew Tham, and Karima Walker for participating!
About the record: This is my first LP! I’m really grateful to the folks at American Dreams, especially Jordan Reyes, for putting so much into this project. I worked with Sonnenzimmer, the Chicago-based genius duo of Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi, to develop the artwork, which they designed and hand printed in their studio. We had an amazing time together, dancing and laughing and screen printing and drawing — kind of like an artistic mise en place before they made this delicious design:
The track titles were written by my dear friend, the poet Elizabeth Metzger, who always has a beautiful perspective on music and life. I sent her the album when I finished it and she wrote me a long email of thoughts, which we condensed together into a poem. The album title is from a line in William Jay Smith’s poem, Touch the Air Softly. I first knew of this poem because my mom (a wonderful songwriter, singer, and harpist) set it to music and used to sing it to me as a child. It’s a love poem, of sorts, but one that feels like it reaches outward toward the whole world.