Every week and in public I try to write and record something new. This is the basic premise of MY BIG BREAK, an online correspondence project running since about 2018. In its format as a weekly dispatch, the project keeps me in touch with a lot of people, keeps me observant of my life's narrative and its inner eddies, and gives me something to shoot for every week. It's a little like working out - "getting my reps in" - and a little bit like my freshman year LiveJournal. The weekly work is a helpful anchor.
The music is soundtrack to and source material for the writing, they are separate but linked, digestible individually or together, and every week I simply offer them to you, whoever you are.
For this second volume of MY BIG BREAK tracks, I wanted to hone in on the sound a bit more, present a more digestible collection of work ("hone in? who does this guy think he is? the compilation's still over 90 minutes long!"). This volume is of the meditative, nice-sounding variety, with all manner of approaches - cassette loops, acoustic guitar, various pianos, overheated reel-to-reels, encountered sound, gliding lap steel, and the ever-present synths made of samples of singing voices, my own and that of friends. It's not in any kind of time order, but it does make a kind of sense as you listen. I also wanted to find a way to honor the writing a bit more, the other half of the work, so included with a download here is a 40-page PDF containing the writing and the weekly images, a companion to your listening.
Gathering these pieces of writing and chunks of music proved to be surprisingly intense - years out, much of the work I can't quite remember making, and as I read and listened I found myself reminded of a thousand little sonic and verbal details I wouldn't otherwise remember. As I move through my life and the lives of those I encounter, this project is a leaking camera. Every Thursday I'm getting it out but - more crucially - every Thursday I'm also getting it all down, briefly gripping the little grains of life as they slide slipping through our fingers.
credits
released January 26, 2023
tracks recorded at home and elsewhere between 2020 and 2022
writing happened at home and elsewhere, too
all originally published via MY BIG BREAK
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The Shivas deliver a set of righteous three-chord wonders with a mean streak that will always be to the tastes of a certain doomy subset of ‘60s rock fans. Bandcamp Album of the Day Oct 29, 2019