My solo record Passages is out now via No Gold, available on limited-edition vinyl, on Youtube as a Visual Album, and on streaming services. I’m incredibly proud of the record – my first release under my own name – and so grateful to everyone who supported and encouraged me throughout the process. Special thanks to the musicians who contributed to the songs; to Angus, Michael, and Ben at No Gold; to Kevin Condon and his incredibly photography; and to Rebecca Shenfeld’s and Anthony Scalzo’s work putting together the videos. Check out these streams, and look below for a track-by-track rundown.

“The Parallel” was the first song that I started for the record, and the last one to be finished.  Over the course of working on it, I fell in love with how resampling and processing sounds could bridge the divide between acoustic and synthetic instruments, and I was inspired to continue down that path.  The process of making these songs is a balance of composition and pure chance, which requires equal parts experimentation and patience, with the end result being as much of a collage as anything else.  I had been working on this track for a while when I was introduced to Reid Jenkins, whose expressive violin parts helped me to see the way through to completion.

“Bodiless” is based around the layered vocals of Kristina Moore (Kolezanka, Foyer Red).  Kristina has one of my favorite voices that I’ve ever had the pleasure to record & mix, and I wrote the piano and synth parts to accompany the cascading choirs that emerged from my sampler. 

“Around The Park”: I live a blessed park life – my home is across the street from one, my studio is down the block from another – and I often go for a walk around the park when I’m feeling stuck on something.  This song sounds like that feeling to me – circling, contemplating, lost in the thick of things until you realize the answer is right in front of you.  I don’t remember  how I made the original bubbling sample, but I loved the way that it danced around the pulse, even if it felt like an outlier in this collection.  It sat that way for months, until I realized that a piano part from a different demo worked over it, and that a flute part (by Chase Ceglie) from another discarded track fit perfectly in the spaces in between.  “Eureka” or “duh”?

Some songs took months to finish, but I made “The Aqueduct’s Interior” in one sitting.  It’s based around a massively slowed down choir recording – the detuned sibilants reminded me echoes in a tunnel, and I continued following that mental picture until this arrangement was complete.

“Skimming The Surface” started from a period of time where I was throwing various sounds that grabbed my attention into the sampler, and seeing what I could have it spit out.  As this pile of assorted ideas started to grow, I took some time in Mexico City to go through and start shaping them.  This one clicked quickly – the synth was recorded in my hotel room there, and I replayed the piano part through a delay as soon as I got back to New York.

“True Aim (and One Locked Door)” was one of the last songs I made for the record.  By that point in the process, I had a pretty clear picture of what I was going for sonically, and I asked Elana Riordan (Foyer Red) to come record some wind instruments on the album.  Her clarinet harmonizing with my synth gave it a wonderful shape, and the “choir” sample of Sarah Kinlaw (another one of my favorite singers that I’ve had the pleasure of working with) glued it all together.  Shout out to Angus Andrew for the fantastic title.

“A Passage” also came about later in the process.  I had shared early versions of these tracks with friends & collaborators, scrapped the stuff deemed “too new age-y”, saved the “horror soundtrack” ideas for something else, and focused on the blend of acoustic instrumentation + synths.  I felt the need for an interlude to setup the final stretch of the album – something that summed up the sound world in a short piece – and repurposed some strings from Constant Smiles (the revolving collective led by Ben Jones) into this resampled haze.

“Earth’s Lilt” is based around a one-take improvisation on a Moog Matriarch.  It always resonated with me but I wasn’t sure how it would fit on the record, until Elana Riordan played flute over it in the studio, and everything clicked into place.

“Seeds Of Memory” falls firmly on the side of collage.  I was experimenting with resampling strings (courtesy of Adam Lytle), which I layered with the otherworldly sounds of Christopher Duffy’s homemade Glass Armonica (left over from an Eaters rehearsal) and a processed field recording I made in one of my local parks (also otherworldly in its own way).

“The End Of Something”:  I wrote and arranged this record during a period of massive change – personally, professionally, and creatively speaking.  This song always felt like that specific blend of emotions that comes with leaving something behind.