Generational Drift

It has been exactly one year since the release of my EP ‘Generational Drift’. At that time, I talked about the struggles I had in recording, finding motivation and direction. So for the music to coalesce into an album that feels more complete, more alive, than some of my long players, is something I still feel grateful for.

The opening track, “Original Place” was recorded during the sessions that became my album ‘Hosts of Living Forms’. It was noisy and a bit brash, startling, even. In the context of that album it didn’t fit, but it works marvelously as an opening track here. The song functions as a kind of mission statement. Things are not quite right. Can amends be made?

The trio of tracks that follow were all created together as part of what I intended to be my next album. They share a lot of DNA with ‘Heat Shade’, but while I was making them it became increasingly clear to me that they needed to live somewhere else, and that I needed some distance before diving in properly on work for a follow-up record.

The final song, “The Mercy Promised to Our Fathers”, was an older track I put together right after completing work on ‘Hosts’. Recorded during a transitional time when I was unsure of my next move, it lacked any narrative thread connecting it to future work, so I sort of forgot about it. I am so thankful that I did, because it resurfaced at just the right time and found its proper home among these other songs.

The album continues to capture my imagination in a way I couldn’t have anticipated when it initially took shape. Artists are rarely the best judge of their own material, but I think it is some of my best work. Certainly, it was one of the most artistically fulfilling projects of which I have been a part.

Theia

My intention with Theia was to make a soundtrack to recovery. I have always been a hopeful person and try to find the good in things. There is something empowering in deciding that the setbacks in your life will not define your future. In fact, those setbacks, if you allow them to, can become a catalyst for growth.

I think that Theia follows this arc of descent through recovery and into acceptance pretty well. Especially considering the path its composition took. The music for Theia was originally intended to be two separate albums (initially I wanted to follow up Sedna with an album I was going to call Laniakea, all about finding peace in the vastness of this world). One track was recorded months before even Sedna was made. That these disparate threads were able to coalesce into something that feels cohesive, if a little rough around the edges, is a bit of a minor miracle to me.

Listening back to it now I can hear seeds of things I would pursue more intentionally in my later work. The guitar melodies of “Selenian Sunset”, the crackling drones of “Truth Like Seeds of Trees”, the glacial synth bass of “Find What’s True, Hold It Up”, all have become essential textures for my music.

I find it an odd little album, to be honest. But of course, I don’t regret a single moment of it.

Sedna

It’s hard to believe my first album as The Lifted Index will be turning two in a couple of months. I will always remember making this ‘Sedna’ because it was the most freeing experience I have ever had as a musician. Prior to its recording I had been working on one single album for years, struggling to find a sound and aesthetic that always felt frustratingly beyond my reach.

The recording sessions that eventually became Sedna were initially conceived as a mental break for myself from that other record. I referred to Sedna as my “side quest” album. I turned my previous way of working upside down. No drums. Essentially no bass. Just me and a few pieces of inspirational gear, and the space carved out to create. Something about that casual approach made the whole thing feel frictionless.

Just prior to recording, my family and I took a short camping trip. Out in the woods I began to ruminate on this single word: unseen. I thought about how so little of what we experience in our lives are visible to us. So much is implied, gestured at, or presumed. Even more still passes completely beneath our perception. We are finite creatures in an infinite world.

Something about those thoughts felt compelling to me; compelling enough to explore through music. So that is what I did. In an effort to mark my intentions in some way, I added vocals to two of the tracks. Embedded in “To Look Up at the Cold Sky” is the number 90377, the designation assigned to the titular trans-Neptunian planetoid. “Light of the Unseen Sun” includes phrases taken from the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews, where the author muses on the nature of faith and its relationship to things unseen.

The words are primarily there to serve as texture, but they are always intentional. I did not, however, intend for them to become such an integral part of the fabric of whatever The Lifted Index became. But I liked having this human stamp on my music, so they remain a crucial element of my sound.

Sedna will always hold a special place in my heart. It is the album that gave me back my musical voice; something I had lost for a long time without even realizing it. Or maybe it had been there all along, only hidden. Unseen.   

Words

Words are important; certainly they matter a great deal to me.

For someone who essentially makes instrumental music, I recognize the contradiction. But if you have spent time with my music you have likely heard something like speech weaving through its fabric. While I would not say that these words are central to the enjoyment of the music I make as The Lifted Index, I would say that they are central to the creation of it.

The words are primarily for myself. They are markers, reminders, affirmations. Sometimes they are the words of others, sometimes they are my own. Sometimes they are a collage of both. But they matter to me.

From time to time I might want to talk about them in a format a bit more forgiving than an Instagram post. So here is a blog. A place for words.