News, Releases, and Updates.
Danceworks 2025: signal::transfer
Northwestern University Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Centers
I had an incredible opportunity to become a sound designer for the production “Danceworks 2025: signal::transfer.” I composed three dance tracks for a wonderful choreographer named Al Evangelista who designed a dance performance around them.
These tracks were quite unusual to anything I had recorded before and provided an excellent challenge. The songs needed to be faster and more energetic than my usual stuff, plus they needed more electronic-oriented production. The result became a cool lofi-electronic-dance hybrid that suited Al’s choreography very well.
Danceworks 2025: signal::transfer
Additionally, here is a great review!
“Hey, That’s Not Lofi” - Now Streaming Everywhere!
Released on October 28th, 2024. Available on all major streaming platforms.
My latest album is out! This is a lofi-inspired compilation composed around slow grooves, muffled pianos, tape saturation, and jazzy guitars. Many of the songs feature traditional lofi drum patterns, hisses and crackles, and the ambient textures that characterize the genre.
I’m pretty proud to say that this album, from start to finish, was entirely my own. I recorded my own foley textures, arranged all my own drums and beats, played all the instruments, and even did all my own mixing and mastering.
Overall, this was a fantastic project to work on and I am very excited to have it publicly available everywhere.
Pre-Release Available!
October 2024
For Apple Music users, you can download a pre-release of my new album, “Hey, That’s Not Lofi.”
The album features a lot of lofi-inspired tracks, and this particular song “On the Path” was produced to be particularly laid-back.
“Prove It” (single)
Released September 2024
This was a very exciting release for a few specific reasons: First, it is the first song I mixed and produced completely by myself. Second, Alek had a major input on it and arranged all of the percussion parts, which I think gave it a lot of energy. Third, I think it really highlights a transition in my songwriting and recording capabilities.
This song features a lead organ and piano, some background string arrangements, clavinets, and electric keys. Guitars play a relatively small supporting role in this song, which, for me, is a big developmental marker for my songwriting and recording.
“One Day at a Time” (single)
Released June 2024
After I released “Bandwagon,” I wanted to make something a bit smaller. My goal was to create a functionally different experience: instead of recording an orchestra of electric instruments and harmonies, I recorded one acoustic guitar and sang; instead of retrofitting melodies over pre-written chords, I wrote a melody first and composed the chords around it. “One Day at a Time” was, I think, a more traditional songwriting experience.
The subject? One of my favorite video games. The lyrics, chords, melodies, and instruments all pay homage to the music and atmosphere of the game. The album cover, which I drew, has some less than subtle references, too.
“Six in Six”
Released June 2024
I think this was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
One afternoon, I got a little bit too irritated while listening to a bunch of repetitive, ridiculously simple electronic beats on some playlist and thought to myself with absolutely no valid basis, “anyone can do this.”
So, at that point, it became critically important that I found a way to back that claim up. The question was how? I figured I could produce a bunch of those kinds of songs in a short amount of time, but I wanted to prove it. In fact, I wanted to try to make them better.
I decided that streaming the whole thing would be a lot of fun and would hold me accountable, too. I would be on camera for six hours straight, writing and recording a full song every hour. After six hours was up, I’d have six completed songs.
On Sunday, January 28th, 2024, I streamed live from 11am to 5pm nonstop. By 5:01pm, I had written and recorded six full songs just like I wanted.
“Bandwagon”
Released in 2022. My first solo album.
“Bandwagon” was released in 2022 after I began growing disenchanted with working on other people’s songs all the time. After awhile, I wanted to explore writing my own music.
"Bandwagon” was my first multi-instrumental project. I had played the bass maybe once—maybe twice—before publicly, and certainly never the piano, so this album was the culmination of a few years of behind-the-scenes practice. Often, I would record a whole song, and then go and re-record all of the parts one at a time a month or two later just to make all the parts sound a little bit better, especially the bass and piano parts.
Overall, it was a time-consuming yet satisfying experience. I learned about a million rules in a few short years and made a million mistakes, but it was an invaluable experience.