Contemplation 64

OFFICIAL ARTIST’S COMMENTARY

June 24, 2024

-the album title-

There is a hand game called “Concentration” that my friends and I would play as far back as I can remember. The lyrics (at least the ones I learned) go:

Concentration, sixty-four

No repeats, or hesitation

I go first, and you shall follow

Category is: [insert a subject, such as names, foods, colors, etc.]

It was just something to pass the time with on the school bus or at recess or at parties, and it seemed like I was the only one who never got bored of it. I am, admittedly, still the only one to consider prompting my friends for a round today. Contemplation 64 is a play on the name of this game, as I found myself coming into a plethora of experiences which would soon elicit exciting, irritating, confounding, discombobulating, and ultimately boundless thoughts. I did my best to keep up with the rhythm and the pace, to be ready to respond when it came my turn. No hesitation. This album is a fraction of those responses: a sonic journal full of riddles that even I don’t know all the answers to.

-the cover art-

I took a photo of this seagull that looked like “Guhhh, my life,” you know? And I knew it had to be a part of the album, but I wanted my cover to be a collage of things. So I recreated the bird from the photo and cut out a bunch of images from magazines and such; stars, a balloon, letters for the title. The text hidden among the cutouts comes from a paper I’d written on the subject of film noir. I photographed the design, did some editing, threw a copious amount of digital grain on the whole thing (an effect trending with both my past release covers), and slapped my name over it. I love visual composition. Just like music, there’s so much room for hiding secrets.

01 “We’re Opening”

About halfway through production it occurred to me that I didn’t have an opening track yet, so I started listening back to some demos for ideas. I had already recorded a majority of “Nonsense” (Track 12) but in my listening I realized I had left out a riff that was intended for that song. So I recorded the riff, tried out some new production tools, and out blossomed a new reality. Something which I was adamant about since naming the album was including a recording of a game of “Concentration” already in progress. It happened that I was visiting some buddies for a movie and we arrived early enough that there was only us and nothing playing in the theater yet. It hit me: “Friends. Quiet. Phone. RECORD IT NOW.” Neither of them had any knowledge of the game so I had to teach it to them first. After a few minutes I’d finally gotten them to understand the rhythm and concept, but when we began our first actual round, film previews had switched on and my recording was compromised. What you hear at the top of the song is me trying to start the game before realizing they didn’t know what it was. Overall, I seriously like this piece. It garnered the newest sound out of any of my releases so far and it’s the only track I trust of these to kick off this album.

02 “Virginia Trees (Interlude)”

This came from a poem I wrote as the seasons were crossing over in November of 2023. I didn’t want to explicitly read or sing the full poem because the one phrase summed it up enough. I only needed to bridge the opener to the next song, so I left it to exist as an interlude. Playing the part of Nostalgic Astronaut Trumpeter is Ellis Williams, who makes an official feature in “Moving On” (Track 9).

03 “Balloon Ride”

One of the earliest songs to grace this album. I was messing around with rhythm and muttered out a speech pattern, then some words fell into the rhythm and turned out a short plot. The story follows a narrator holding sanctuary inside a balloon from an endless cyclone of people regurgitating various pieces of advice. I once sang a plea in sing-song to myself out of stress, which was inherently hilarious but from the bottom of my heart regardless, and that plea was how I decided to end the song. At its core, this is an everybody-shut-up song and, to be candid, it’s undoubtedly the first of many more to come.

04 “A Take of Two”

I had taught myself how to move chromatically between full-voiced minor 11th chords on piano and I just thought it was the neatest trick. I jumped around and mixed up these chords for a while until one day I found a progression that I liked listening to. So I recorded it, stuck some filters on it, and subsequently cut one of the tightest beats to my name.

05 “Honey Graham Cracker”

This began as an exercise in building a J Dilla-style beat. It’s a very simple track, it took the least amount of development, I grew highly satisfied with my product and named it after the snack I had been eating every night at the time. Shoutout to mon Best^TM, my closest friend Citlalli, for laying down the flute loop. I hope to churn out more Dilla-inspired tracks as I keep making my music.

06 “Richard Kind”

When I watched this segment I couldn’t express how deeply Richard Kind’s words were resonating with my own sentiments. So I crafted a lyricless, ponderous soundtrack to the things he said and filled the remainder with volumes of chatter. I was looking for a sound that wasn’t so much for dancing or singing along to, but a kind of pensive heartbeat that sustained the whole piece.

07 “5.99, Valentine (A Distracted and Flirtatious Wanderer is Passing Through)”

I was going through the motions at work and said to myself the details of a product to recall them later. Those details rhymed. The same day, I said many more observational and nonsensical things to myself, including a wordless chant which I hummed whilst waiting for time to pass. I wrote those nonsensical pieces down and a couple of them stuck around by the time I opted for a second bridge across tracks. The open space between those snaps and claps could be filled with anything, so with such little musical texture I wanted to allow the listener the opportunity to lay down their own verses (or melodies or harmonies). It’s a kind of prompt. As for the title, I thought it’d be funny to give the shortest track the longest name.

08 “Peroxide Language” (featuring Equinox the Ubiquitous)

This was the last piece to be conceived for this album, and remains my favorite space to live in over the rest of these songs. Its name resulted from a typo while talking to the artist featured on this track, in which instead of typing “poetic language” he had sent “peroxide language”. We both really dug the phrase and joked about turning it into a song for a moment, then hours later I was asking him to write one 16-bar peroxide-themed, angsty, romantic verse (whatever that meant).

09 “Moving On” (featuring Ethan Wills, Ellis Williams)

This song took the most development, the most reworking, and the most thought. It came from a lot of frustration at a handful of things. I’m really not a fan of explicitly discussing personal situations, nor a fan of finger-pointing in my work, but I had something to say and my usual method of articulating myself to other folks wasn’t working. So I used this track to try my hand at writing an elaborate verse of my own. Every phrase is laced and weighted with a legitimate meaning. I said what I needed to, but then I had a lot more track leftover, so I had some buddies blow over it and make it danceable to compensate for the rant that I opened with.

10 “Funny-Lookin’, Lovely-Lookin’” (featuring Kelly Rossum)

The three-part “Look just like the mornin’” came to me as I was waking up one morning; sometimes there’s leftover dream juice filtering out of my head when I awake, the way steam rises from a freshly cooked meal. Before I even began my morning routine I recorded those parts, and then I vibed on it all day at work. A passing thought to put Kelly on my album at all became a very immediate reality and a very high honor bestowed upon me. Personally, this track absolutely goes the hardest of anything I’ve written.

11 “Fists and Furrowed Brows” (featuring Kambria Cook)

I had been listening to a couple songs that were very similar in energy and even shared a melodic motif. It took a long time, but I derived from and elaborated on that motif until it translated into a sound that fit where I was at the time. I was feeling romantic and wrote some things down, and I asked my marvelous actor-singer-entertainer-performer friend Kambria (whose voice you may have heard on “Walkabout” from my debut EP) to perform the soliloquy.

12 “Nonsense”

For a while I had written down a made-up passing conversation that went, “Does that make sense? / Yeah, that makes sense. / No it doesn’t.” This back-and-forth is essentially something I go through on my own daily. I asked some well-respected and beloved pals to record themselves speaking the pieces to that dialogue and I filled in the third line myself. At last it was real and I felt less like a loon. This particular bassline was running through my ears one day and I subsequently fleshed out an instrumental with this quasi- “Can I Kick It” (A Tribe Called Quest) loop. And I fricking love to scat, so I took advantage of the whole “nonsense” concept.

13 “Fish Bones” (featuring Equinox the Ubiquitous)

Some clouds that I saw looked like fish bones against the blue sky and I started singing “fish bones in the sky,” and I’d never heard anyone sing such before so I took on the assignment. The lyric “The world’s something so hazy” originated as a placeholder until I realized the statement made sense, then I kept going with “And I’m sure that I’m crazy” which was very real by me and just happened to rhyme. I found the airiness of the chorus charming and let it lead the texture of the song to breathe a bit. I asked the good Equinox to take a listen and he wrote me some sick verses. I am eternally grateful for his collaborations.

I must thank my bangin’-est rhythm crew, composed of bassist Korei Clardy, pianist Ethan Wills, and drummer Jade Rosier, for comping over my stuff and for their commitment to my work. This project showed me how true it is that collaboration is vital for me as a music-maker (and dreamer of dreams). To all who contributed to this album without hesitation, thank you for working with me on a whim, thank you for your patience with my urgency, and thank you for making music with me. Love y’all.