On 10 Years of Mid-City Island
I was painstakingly self-conscious in the beginning of my career. Iâd grown up accustomed to writing in a vacuum, in my childhood bedroom, in my dorm room, hiding my songbook inside my mattress or at the bottom of a drawer. I always thought Iâd get to make my first recordings in total obscurity, clumsily clanging around.
But months before I began recording my first EP, things blew up.
After a few shows and 2 bedroom recordings, seemingly everyone from the Los Angeles music scene was suddenly peering into my window, waiting to see what my first offering would be, hoping for commodifiable gloss. I was wined and dined and unrefined.
But I didnât want to record the âR&B recordâ that would make me famous. I wanted to make something experimental akin to the early recordings I loved â Linda Perhacsâ Parallelograms; Sufjan Stevensâs A Sun Came; the scratchy musings of Cody ChestnuTT and Milton Nascimento; the kitchen candor of Jessica Pratt. Instead I was often shipped to fancy producersâ and execsâ home studios and offices, forced to listen to them preach about how I was a star-in-waiting. I didnât want to be a star. I wanted to be honest.
But secretly, I did feel like a star. Gaseous and infinite, distant and intangible, shining bright in the middle of a constellation, unable to touch the celestial bodies around me. I scribed âMan on the Moonâ on a red guitar I bought on sale from a shuttering music store.
In one of these producer meetings, I journeyed to the top of a mountain to meet TV on the Radioâs Dave Sitek. He gave me a four-track recorder and told me to say âf*ck offâ to everyone trying to sign or produce me. He told me to find my own voice or others would find it for me. He taught me how to record myself to tape, sparking an affinity for analogue processes. I âborrowedâ the tape recorder, promising I would come back when I had found my sound. It sits now on the topmost shelf in my home studio. I guess Iâm still searching.
Mid-City, Los Angeles was more of a concept than a place. Seemingly nobody had ever heard of it, and yet it was the geographic center of the city. Living there felt analogous to my disposition as a ârisingâ Angeleno â highly visible and invisible at the same time. It was an urban island and the sun beat its concrete ceaselessly. I sat on my bedroom floor and wrote âPlastic,â listening to Amy Winehouse demos and thinking about how we let our stars fall as long as they entertain us on the way down.
I recorded these misgivings straight to cassette on that Yamaha MT4X, feeling like a historian tracing my own origins. I loved that it sounded older than it was. I felt older than I was. I decided then that I would press it to vinyl in 10 years. I couldnât afford to make vinyl records anyway. Instead, I backpacked little cassette tapes I would sign and sell at shows.
I realized early on that being visible (but not necessarily seen) was just gonna be a part of my story. How blessed I was to push through it with clear vision â and now Iâm forced to stop and reflect. 10 years later, Iâm still thinking 10 years ahead. Ask me about now in 10 years. Shoot, ask me in 20.
- M
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"Mid-City Island," our limited-edition 10 year anniversary black vinyl, is available to pre-order now:Â mosessumney.bandcamp.com/album/mid-city-island
