So here it is. A compilation of self-eulogizing cries for help and other depressing things. For whatever it’s worth, I think they all came out alright. I wrote 2/3rds of the album drunk. So I don’t remember it. Like someone else wrote it. A constant theme I found trying to get the lyrics on paper is making peace with death while trying to burn my past. Sometimes it’s pretty straight forward, but I think i’m often being coy or cryptic.
The songs on the album stretch from 2010 to 2018. See, when I was drinking and writing I didn’t anticipate making it to 30. Now that I have, and I have some crippling writer’s block, I figured I’d try to make sense of all the music I wrote and put together a compilation. They were taken from the albums Milargos, Blood, The Bad Year, Ghostwater, Dragon, Lilly, Hologram and a few others I think. I wrote a lot. Maybe I exhausted my creative energies by being so prolific. I mean I doubt this, but it’s a possibility I gotta consider.
There’s no real order to the tracks here. I’d suggest using headphones for it. Everything here was mixed to headphones. Often recorded via a built in macbook mic. It’s lo-fi. Not tape-hiss-lo-fi, and I’ll admit, it’d probably have a touch more charm if that was the case.
This all may sound really depressing, but I should add that I’m glad I didn’t die. Very glad. Things are better now. Perhaps harder, but better. I can’t say. Huge gaps in memory. I was hospitalized with pancreatitis that came from some heavy heavy drinking. That came after months of throwing up daily. Only ended up lugging myself to the ER when blood started coming up in it.
Grim, but I gotta type it out to remind myself. Anyway. There’s a notable tone shift from the pre-hospital period to now. I still struggle with depression, of course, but hey, gotta keep going I guess. This is about the music anyway. I think I kept a lot of stuff vague or cryptic in the hopes that people would glean from it whatever they wanted. You can still do that. I encourage it.
For anyone who’s followed my music for a while, you deserve a medal. You also may remember that these were released under the name Swimmingpool The Band. I hated that name. Again, I was drinking all the time. Eh. So it’s now all under my current name, Mall Ghosts.
I haven’t included any of the instrumental pieces in here. It’s funny, and i hate this, but my instrumental stuff always got more attention. But it always felt easier. I’m not trying to brag or anything either. I didn’t feel like I earned that praise (if you could call it that).
So here’s Witness. 26 songs from 8 years and over 8 albums.
I wrote all the songs and played most of the instruments. Diana is present on a handful of tracks.
