We covered “Continuing Worlds” on The Long Play Listening Party. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, or on YouTube below.

I wanted to capture something that’s happening in my brain, at the intersection of the 404 samplers and my “Jam My Wave” guitar demos. I’m doing something new, made possible by learning the 404 and sample-based music generally, that no one would guess from just hearing the end results.

As I listen to “Jam My wave” guitar demos and work on melodies, I’m making progress not by singing nonsense or jamming like I typically would, but by listening to the guitar and imagining what kind of vocals would sound interesting or make a good call and response with the instrumental. It’s almost like, or is like, thinking about what kind of sample is needed next in sample-based music-making, and I wouldn’t be doing it if not for the 404s.

In some spots I’ve actually written the vocals, with notes/intervals and scratch lyrics. In other places I just have ideas like “Be inspired by Thom Yorke here” or “Fit the vocal into the space between the 4th chord and the downbeat of the next progression.”

This changed way of listening and writing is why I bought the 404SX in the first place, not knowing if I’d actually finish any music with it. I hoped it would change my ears in interesting ways, putting new tools in the mental toolkit. I’m happy that both the new ears and actual 404 music are happening.

Been a while since I updated, but it’s not for nothing going on; too much, rather! Many things. All of the things.

• “Frog On The King’s Head,” my first record on the 404mkII, keeps rolling along. Five songs are essentially done save for little mix tweaks, and in the past few weeks I’ve finished three more instrumentals. (It’s a 10-song record.) It’ll be out of order but I’m excited to share it so I think I’ll release it about as soon as it’s ready, mid- to late summer
• In February Daniel G (Hypermortal, L.U.V.C.R.A.F., etc.) and I were talking and spontaneously decided to make a house record. It… is not going to sound anything like a house record. It’s weird progressive synth music with otherworldly vocals and a few guitars. We’re having a blast, though, using the back-and-forth process Nate and I used for “Orbital Debris”
• Anywaves keeps sending tracks, and I keep mastering them :)
• I’m working on a Drone Space Nine record in VCV Rack, inspired by the first DS9 but starting from scratch and building the space station sounds to my exact specs

I’ve updated the data visualizations with our latest releases, plus some enhancements.

As we approach twenty years in the independent label game, we have as much music coming out as ever. I wish I had a way to embed this as an interactive visualization, because in Power BI where I created this you can hover to get actual artists and album titles.

One thing you *can* see, in the rainbow of artists, is Night Mode; the salmon pink that starts in 2016 and dominates 2019 – present.