I released my debut EP on March 2, 2018. At that time, it… mostly wasn’t really listened to by anyone, but I’m nonetheless proud of the recordings and especially the lyrics. The initial description I gave the album on my bandcamp page was:
“…while ‘trophy catastrophe’ and ‘aviv love’ were written relatively recently – pieced together from some of my first poetry zines – the remaining songs date lyrically back to last summer, based on caricatures of some very special friends of mine from when I lived in my house on the east side of Austin, TX directly behind the Full Circle bar, enjoying beer-soaked funk or flying punk rock shows next door then out on the back patio under a haze of cigarette smoke and light misting before hopping a fence into my backyard…”
Almost a full year separated the release from the romanticized time period that I was mainly writing about. I was in Denton, TX and, outside of a gig at a technology-based corporate headquarters and a couple community college classes I attended off-and-on, I was living in stark, self-imposed isolation. It was a very productive, if often miserable, period of creative writing and forays into art (painting, zine illustration, charcoal, stenciling and collage-making) that I had never experienced before.
You can hear the effect of that malaise on the unevenness of the recordings; the shortest, simplest recording ‘whats in the ize’ was musically composed, recorded and mixed effectively within an hour, all while trying not to wake anyone since it was well past midnight. And it’s probably the best recording. Conversely, ‘aviv love’ in its final state is utterly unlistenable to me now, and the song went through countless takes and compositions, which with increasing apathy declined in quality I think.
‘whats in the ize’ contains an allusion to Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles’ seven words to make a woman love you; I’ve been a huge fan of his books, and so has my little brother, who even bought me an Eolian stoneware mug one Christmas that I use everyday still. Otherwise the poem is based on some ethereal ideas about consciousness and perspective, but I misremember what exactly I was really trying to convey. By contrast, ‘electric everywhere’ and ‘microloving’ both were specifically written about two former very close friends, I’ll call them Gabby and Marisol, who lived with me in my house in Austin. I think some lines I was writing about them, and other lines I was trying to imagine or recall their perspectives.
Anyways, listen below! Additionally you can read the lyrics for each song by clicking here.