The Blacklit split is a collection of 4 songs I’ve been working on at various times in the past year. I typically write, demo, perform live and then see what sticks after that and these are some of my favorites.
I’m excited to work with both Chris Koza (Blacklit) and Ivan Howard (vocals on Can’t Be Found). I’ve known both of them since the early 2000’s. I love Chris’s band We Miss The Earth, and we both got into electronic music at about the same time. Ivan and I reconnected a couple of years back when he released his solo record. I’ve always been a huge Rosebuds fan ever since Alcian Blue played with them at the Galaxy Hut in Arlington, VA.
Can’t Be Found
I’m a big Townes Van Zandt fan, and he used to talk about “Sky Songs.” Those are songs that sort of come right out of you effortlessly. Can’t Be Found was one of those songs. I woke up with the lyrics in my head and recorded them through the vocoder. It was simple, but I was feeling particularly down about the state of well everything these days. The lyrics were a reaction to that.
Ivan and I had been recording a New Order cover for fun; I sent him the song and asked if he wanted to do some vocals and he sent back a bunch of excellent parts. We worked on the mix; it felt like working on a Single Screen Vinyl Image would have done.
Doggerland
I was reading Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us during the winter, and there is a section in there about Doggerland. It was an area of land in the North Sea that connected Great Britain to Europe. There are a few scientific theories about what likely happened. It’s a bit of a mysterious story. I felt it fit the mood of the music. I had this idea to try and combine a very 707 House vibe with my love of the Cocteau Twins. So, the synths have a heavy layered reverb feel and of course lots of delay.
Sunlit
I was working on a few different songs when I came up with this. I needed a break from beats and programming machines and I was listening to a lot of Cluster and Ashra. I pulled out the D-05 and experimented with several effects chains. I then ran everything through lots of saturations until the song sounded smudgy and warm. I finished mixing it right when the weather started to get nice out and thought Sunlit matched how the music sounds.
Musique Brocante
Brocante is French for flea market. I was putting together a transition piece for a live set using a lot of samples, and that formed the basis of this song. It went over well when I performed it live, so I took that format and added to it. “Music Flea Market” seemed appropriate for all of the sample manipulations.