#absolute fantasy

"Until Failure" began as a meditation on the line between heroism and villainy, but grew into the story of my mental health struggle. I began the song before the worst bout of depression and anxiety I've had yet. I still don't remember much of summer 2015, but I pushed myself to keep working, even though it's the last thing I wanted to do.

As the song took shape, I began coming out of my fog. The title, a play on a fitness term, became a mantra: to keep trying until I couldn't anymore, then take a break and start agin. While I sat on the track for years, thinking of it as a demo, I eventually realized that it captured a moment in my life, and that the voice singing on the song was the one that experienced all that pain.

In sharing this song, I hope that others will be able to face their own struggles and know that, if they just keep going, they can make it out the other side.

My debut EP is finally out, thanks to Memory No. 36 Recordings. You can listen right here and head over to Bandcamp if you wanna download it for free (or pay what you wish). Below, is a little info on the EP.

At the cusp of 2015 with my partner and I putting our long running project Alligator Indian on hiatus and my 30th birthday approaching, I started spending a lot of time reflecting on my three decades of life and my past ten years of music making. Out of this contemplation grew the project Absolute Fantasy, which saw me mining both experiences and past songs and compositions for both lyrical and musical concepts. One of the earliest tracks to grow out of this was "20th Century Analysis," which I began working on while on an annual river house trip with some of my cohorts from the short-lived Asheville, NC performance space Apothecary. As I constructed the song, using samples of pieces I wrote for school nearly a decade earlier, I began recalling memories and feelings from my days in college. Much of the track focuses on my sense of isolation in my many music classes as I was a relative newcomer to the world of classical music and voice, which I was studying. The one class that really clicked for me was the eponymous 20th Century Analysis, which focused on modern classical and 12 tone music.

The title, Well Come Home, encapsulated my infatuation with viewing my past through the eyes of my present that was fueling my project. As chance would have it, my partner and I ended our six years of living in Asheville by moving back to the Space Coast to the town of Cape Canaveral, just north of where we grew up. The title took on an especially fitting meaning and so, after Ricardo Stacy of Memory No. 36 agreed to release the EP, I felt it was the perfect time to share these songs. credits

All tracks were recorded, produced, and mixed by me at Reptile Reservation in Asheville, NC and mastered with Adam "Slam" McDaniel at Drop Of Sun Studios in Asheville, NC. The cover art is a photo of the installation 'Peep Show' by Madalyn Wofford, Brett Wyatt, and Kaylee Dunn from the 2015 Re-Happening in Black Mountain, NC.