For the past three weeks, I’ve been locked up in my home studio writing and recording 7 brand new songs that i’ve decided to refer to as hatemusic. I’ve never produced a piece of music so quickly, but the songs decide when they want to come. I don’t plan this. Hypnogaga was a massive undertaking for me, from a recording and production standpoint, that lasted from start to finish close to 7 months. It was, at times, a very emotional and difficult process and I think the slow pace of putting it together allowed me to be more mindful of and precise in the soundscapes I was building, and everything that I needed to say.  I believe that in order to evolve as an artist you have to explore unfamiliar and occasionally uncomfortable territories. Because I made such a strong statement with it, I knew that any music I recorded post-hypnogaga would have to set my entire process on ablaze. Salt the earth. Start again.

I imagined the writing and recording of hatemusic would carry me through a few months at least. I knew it was going to be a short set before I started, but even recording We Are Dead Ocean took 4-5 months alone, so you can imagine my surprise when the songs just started pouring out of me. I was literally conceiving a song in the morning and by that evening it would be recorded with a half completed mix. I think part of me was afraid, going into this, that I just had nothing to say. Turns out, I did. A lot to say, in fact. A couple of these tracks contain some of my favorite lyrics I’ve ever written. The way I wrote Hypnogaga, and Dead Ocean for that matter, was painstaking. I built those songs over months, hunting for the right words and I really needed this process to be different. More impromptu, more unedited, more stream of consciousness. This is the way I write poetry, why couldn’t I write songs the same? Since I was making the music AS I was writing the lyrics there are some songs that have words I wrote as I was recording the vocals for them. I wanted to capture the energy of the music. That in the moment feeling. The thing I like best about these new songs is the fire they have. They’re exciting. They’re confrontational. The majority of the record is me screaming at the top of my lungs. I have  a lot of disappointment and a lot of anger, and I forced myself to face it. Tap into it. Own it. Bring all the ugly things, hiding in the shadows, out into the light. Tbc.