folks near and far and dear,

today I'm releasing a suite of five new ambient electronic pieces.

you are warmly welcomed into: The Iridescent Void.

this record is streamable in the places you might expect (search for it by name if your fave isn't listed here), and is also available for keeps on bandcamp.

it’s been a long time coming.

I fell extra-extra hard for ambient music, as so many did, in the heat of the pandemic. for those first two years of the world clawing itself inside out, I was teaching undergrad design classes, on Zoom. the students in my classes were brilliant and about to graduate and were supposed to be concentrating on nothing other than making the best work of their lives so far.

and we were all too scared to think straight.

I reached for ambient music, then, because I didn't know what else to do. it crept into my teaching, wetted the edges of my own MFA studies, and eventually became a steady part of my creative and professional life. it was a quiet digital hearth, something to not only gather, but soften, around. and so, a practice that began in quasi-desperation — with teacher-me sharing my screen and manually riding the Spotify volume fader with my trackpad in order to feel 14% more human again — has turned into so many new types of offerings in the years since. (thanks for being a part of these experiments, if you've joined — we’ve come a long way.)

but while offering the music of others has always felt easy and generous, offering my own has been much more difficult.

The Iridescent Void began a couple years ago, as a series live, looping improvisations, each from a different source instrument: handpan, guitar, vocals, keys. (the piano samples on the last track come from beloved KJ Song, as softly.) it was all just an ephemeral, devotional experiment. I made them to get out of my head. I made them to not have to share them. I thought their purpose was just to be played.

this year, in my own moment of darkness, they asked to be listened to.

when I listened to them, I heard them smeared with indelible hiss. they bend and stretch and gurgle and sparkle in strange places. they are littered with bruises that no plugin I can afford can fully paint over. they are, at times, quite turbulent. they are, at other times, uncomfortably tender. they met me somewhere I never wanted to be, but where I desperately needed to be met.

so I humbly offer these sounds, now spit-shined to the best of my self-taught abilities, in support of ceremony, of contemplation, of integration, and of accompanying the inevitable next journey through the dark.

they will probably not put you to sleep. they will hopefully take you somewhere.

I'd love to know where you end up.

so much love, fellow traveler. enjoy the void.

tm