Spring 2020
Music
It’s been way too long (over a year!) since I last gave an update on stuff I’ve been working on. A lot has happened since then. I’ll see if I can recollect it all here.
Firstly, back in August of 2019 my band King Jane released our debut EP Deep in the Garden.
Here’s a track from the EP I wrote and sing lead on:
A year ago this month, I co-produced a track called Break Through for NYC-based electronic trio Pool Cosby. I had a lot of fun writing the string ensemble arrangement and playing guitar on this track, which was just released two weeks ago on their album Day Breaks. The song began as an instrumental and took on an eclectic dimension with the addition of vocals from guest artist Soren Bryce.
Off and on for the past year or so I’ve been working on the score for a short documentary called The John Budin Story, a story about a prominent psychologist’s own personal journey with bipolar disorder. The film is currently in the last stages of post production and should be finished within the next month.
Since my last update I’ve been working whenever time permits on an absolutely gorgeous record for my friend and bandmate Jenna Smith. The financial and scheduling limitations inherent to the DIY recording process have made producing this record somewhat of a long and arduous process; but we’re nearing the finish line! In a few weeks Jenna will release the album’s first single Watching News on all streaming platforms. Her plan is to release one single per month for the remainder of 2020 and put the whole collection out as a full album under the title Earth Dog Year in December. This is one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever been a part of—a breathtakingly beautiful amalgam of heartfelt folk balladry, 90s inspired dream-pop, and lush verbed-out country. I’m super excited to soon be able to present the fruits of our labor!
Here’s an Instagram video of me working on a song from the record:
Tree Hollow’s latest single Living Proof
Last but not least on the music front, I’ve been working on producing an EP for Tree Hollow—the moody, haunting, psychedelic-folk project of Phil Ling. Phil is a good friend of mine, and we’d been meaning to collaborate for many years. Back in late summer of 2019 Phil asked me if I’d be interested in producing his next EP. He knew he wanted to do something different from his first release Drown in the Moon, a collection of six delicately poignant folk songs more or less straightforwardly arranged. He sent me a demo of the first song Clouds That Pass, knowing that the song needed cello and perhaps some guitar from me. I set to work demoing out some of my ideas for the song, and before we knew it the recording session, set to eventually take place in November at La La Land Studios in Louisville, was nearly upon us. Up until a few days before the session Phil was sending me sketches of the other songs. At that point I knew that the success of the EP would ultimately rely on any chemistry Phil’s band and I could strike up on the spot in the studio. And what a chemistry did we strike! Over the four days of the session, the talents, ideas, and styles of all the music-makers involved gelled into a perfect synergy of emergent magic, and we left with the feeling that we had really accomplished what Phil had intended to do: to make a beautiful, compelling, and totally unique piece of art.
The EP, as of yet untitled, is currently being mixed. Be on the lookout for it in the next two months!
Other Recent Work
I recently started a YouTube channel on lucid dreaming and astral projection (wake-induced lucid dreaming). My first video for the channel is this astral projection tutorial:
I also recently finished a substantial essay synthesizing some of the major philosophical threads I’ve been pursuing for the past few years. Topics covered include Gnosticism, psychedelics, the nature of language, and Jungian philosophy.