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I have begun planning out my next full-length album release, which will probably be out sometime in 2026. Unlike some musicians, I tend to not really be creating music or soundscapes as a regular practice. I feel a little insecure about that because I feel like maybe I should be doing that if I want to take myself seriously in music. Maybe it’s my background in theatre sound design, or just the way that I work with music, but I really need a specific project to work on for me to sit down and start creating. Even if that project mutates or changes dramatically during the making, I need some kind of idea and concept to be working toward.
My first full-length album, Shapes of Heaven bears no resemblance to the original concept that got me started making it, but that original concept was necessary for me to begin. With Science Fictions I wanted to create a series of pieces that would be evocative of science fiction/interstellar settings from the very beginning. My Empty Spaces series of EPs is more nebulous in some ways, but I have a fairly definite concept of what vibe and sound fits in with those.
For a number of years, pretty much ever since my mom passed away in December 2020, I knew that I would be making an album dedicated to her and her memory and impact on me. For a long time, I had planned to build it entirely around field recordings from places that were important to her. I also wanted to either capture those field recordings myself or have them supplied to me by people who were connected to my mother, so using recordings from something like Freesound wasn’t the direction I wanted to go in. But I don’t live in New England currently and most of those places are there. I did visit briefly this past winter and made a few recordings and have gotten a few recordings from my dad in and around their house and neighborhood, but I realized that if I waited to get all the recordings I’d wanted (from multiple places in multiple states over multiple seasons and times), that I might never start this project or, at the very least, it would take several more years to collect them.
So I had to rethink my approach. And just a couple of weeks ago, I unlocked a path and a series of track titles that will guide me through the process. I’m sure there will be some changes throughout the process, but I now have a path, a way forward that gives me a sense of excitement. Field recordings will still be used and influential in the structure of the album, but they won’t be used on every track and I don’t need to wait for any further ones to be made in order to begin.
While I don’t yet have a title for the album, I do have track titles to help guide me. I thought it might be interesting to share these with the world in the nascent stage of the project and we can see what shifts and changes during its development.
While I don’t currently have comments on this site, you can drop me a line on Bluesky (@theseliminaldays.bsky.social) or Mastodon (@theseliminaldays.musician.social) and let me know what you think. I plan to add a contact page to this site soon, but you can also always contact me through my These Liminal Days website.