I’d been listening to Cheri Knight’s American Rituals and Bill Orcutt’s “counting” recordings when I started working on this track. Layered, out of sync vocal recordings and arrangements have always resonated with me – Come Out (Reich), Einstein on the Beach (Glass), Atlas (Monk), etc. – but the acute recognition that this was an aesthetic and technique that gave me real joy only became clear during this recent time. I’d tried to intellectualize it more previously: What is repetition? What’s happening on a neuro-spiritual level? How about a cognitive one? What’s the algorithm? Questions like these, which I found difficult to answer, became less important as I understood that for some ineffable reason I just really loved this kind of music, no different from how I felt about Elvis Costello, Sister Nancy, Joni Mitchell, Fugazi, etc. The discovery was liberating, low-key revelatory.

I’d tried this approach before with field recordings. A subway announcer or a colleague droning on at a meeting, captured on the Notes App of my iPhone because of something that grabbed me, the cadence of the words “next stop” or the repetition of “um” in the middle of sentences. The ultimate in mundanity, perhaps, when it comes to speech and language, yet possessive of a music and poetry so pure it can make me choke up, or at least want to. They were things I’d replay in my head, so why not try and replay them outside of my head too? But it was listening to Knight’s work (especially the song “Hear/Say”) that prompted me to try recording my own voice for this. Aside from curiosity – how it would sound and how it would feel – there was an ethical conundrum I’d been grappling with at play regarding the use of human-voice field recordings (still am, tbh), which I was happy to step aside from for a bit, but that’s for another essay. What’s relevant here is that I began recording short sentences as they came to me and tried to write music around them, filling in spaces, rounding out corners, and providing foundations and cushions.

The sentence used for this track popped into my head from seemingly out of nowhere. Like so many ideas, it felt stunningly poignant at first, but then quickly began to lose some of its power. Instead of discarding it to rot on the virtual and/or mental chopping blocks, I used it, a small crusade against my usual instincts, and decided to see if it became something else.

It’s a bit puzzling why this particular phrase came to me, something so negative and combative, which t I don’t even really believe. I know many artists, most if not all of whom spend most of their energy singing high praises of their artist peers, mentors, and heroes. I do this too. We lift each other up, allow ourselves to be lifted, support is the name of the game. I see it everywhere, at gallery openings, shows, screenings, on friends’ walls or blaring from their stereos, the display of genuine appreciation of what we make, sometimes drawing inspiration, claiming consensual ownership through the exchange of monetary units – the highest praise! – rarely, if ever talking shit.

Historically, I struggle mightily with putting my work out there, and I think that might be what this phrase is about, or more accurately, the anxiety it’s attached to. Who knows why I’ve kept so many things to myself for so long and perhaps who cares – here’s something now. To me, the phrase sounds like a defense, a way of trying to let myself off the hook and ostensibly rise above those who understand the hustle, who are confident enough to share their stuff even when they’re not confident, who can call something “done” long before it is, who can let go and move on. Those were the so-called shit talkers I was thinking of, who weren’t talking shit at all, as it turns out (that would be me, if anyone). Maybe that’s what this is about. Maybe this track is about that too, or not about it but the act of doing it, all those things I just listed. Externalizing the internal makes it not completely yours anymore, a load less heavy, or at least easier to carry if it’s no lighter. Something to move on from, that’s for sure.

Or maybe something else all together.

Whatever the case, here it is.