hello friends,
i’ve started an actual, hit-your-inbox newsletter. if you like my songs, collages and weird tangents on instagram stories, then this is the thing for you.
a moving newsletter
I am trying something out for the next ten weeks or so, and making a video newsletter — a moving newsletter, as I like to call it.
I was drawn to creating something which I could use to update people on my music and just connect in general, since I’ve stepped away from Instagram at the moment. I also wanted to make something nice-looking and light feeling. This format I’ve come up with is like a hybrid of a blog post / newsletter / soundcloud post / vlog. I’m looking forward to developing it a little each week.
13.06.2021
Hello, little life and art update.
Currently listening to: Ethan Gruska’s album En Garde. Favourite tracks include Enough for Now, Teenage Drug and Attacker.
Currently working on: Hurricane EP, which I have been working on for years now. Started in late 2018 when I met up with the initial producer/engineer I was working with, and have since changed songs, changed producers, changed workflow, and really started to bring the project together over COVID. Instead of just one linear path with one producer and one recording site, the songs have become a sort of patchwork of sounds from places across oceans and time. Samples from trains in London, and mandolins and rain from America. Guitar stolen from demos, new stems from friends I haven’t met in person yet. The first track is about to be sent away for mastering, which is a surreal feeling, considering I’ve been working on it for so long, and it feels like these songs have had so many lives already before even hitting other people’s ears.
Something else interesting I have decided to do is stop going on social media until I’m in the promotional phase of this project. Which I know Facebook/Instagram will probably punish me for by hiding my posts in the algorithm (they reward constant use of the app). I don’t really care at this point — I’ve seen how much I use the app and how often it takes me away from what I really should be doing. I can lose large chunks of time in one go. I’m hoping that this change will actually guide me towards more meaningful ways of connecting with people, working, and finding inspiration.
Things I have been doing instead of going on social media:
writing in this blog
sitting and just staring at nothing
researching jobs and training opportunities
listening to podcasts
listening over mixes and working on my EP
That’s still not quite everything I would like to be doing in a life sans social media. What I’d also like to be doing is:
practising music more
exercising & moving my body more
reading more (I am kind of doing this at the moment but am not enjoying the book I’m reading)
writing and drawing more
Maybe these things will come with a bit more time off the apps. I’m still settling in to checking my phone less — I keep picking it up out of habit and scrolling through to find Instagram, which isn’t there anymore.
Missed Connections
I’m really excited to be starting a new songwriting project with my friend Hannah Fredsgaard (aka Asthmatic Harp), called Missed Connections.
It’s a short project where we co-write songs based on posts from Best of Craigslist. Basically, weird and wonderful classified adverts.
Hannah and I met at the Bird on a Wire songwriting workshop this March, which was a course remotely hosted by songwriters Findlay Napier and Boo Hewerdine. After having admired her responses to the tasks we were set over the week, I decided to reach out to Hannah and ask if she wanted to write together. Her songwriting is melodic, whimsical, kind of reminiscent of Regina Spektor, Sufjan Stevens and other anti-folk musicians.
The funny thing is, as soon as I opened the conversation on my phone, I could see that she was already in the process of writing me a message. We ended up saying “hello!” at the exact same time.
After a laugh we decided to write our songs in a style we picked up from the course: writing lyrics independently, and then swapping them so we could write melodies to each other’s words. I really loved the surprise element of this way of writing, the initial delight at another person’s lyrics and then the second surprise of hearing my words set to a beautiful melody I wouldn’t have thought of.
I suggested we used Best of Craigslist to base our songs on. There are some really wild missed connection stories in there. My first set of lyrics were based off this post, where a man sees a girl he was married to for three days back in 1989 pass him on a subway car.
Hannah and I are going to keep swapping lyrics every week for the next month or so, which means two new songs a week. We’ve set up a site for the project and a mailing list. I’m really excited about this project and where it could possibly go.