Music and generative work
RECENT Sound Design






Dawn in an Appalachian Forest


This is a piece I initially composed about 5 years ago now while on a retreat at NACL (North American Cultural Laboratory) in upstate New York. This was in the summer of 2021, right before I left New York City to attend California Institute of the Arts for Composition and Experimental Sound Practices. This was kind of a pivotal time for me. I was coming off of years working in the downtown theatre scene in NYC and I was burnt out as all hell. It’s funny, but it honestly took the COVID pandemic for me to realize how kind of unhappy I had become doing the thing I was supposed to love more than anything else in the world. It was a bit of a mindfuck. 

Pre-COVID I had been accepted to an NACL residency for a project that never came to fruition due to the pandemic. Fortunately for me, Brad and the team gracefully offered me a slot in a new residency program during Summer ‘21 that they were setting up that was less about specific project development and more about artists having a place to go to sort of figure out themselves at their current moment. This was kind of the perfect concept for me at the time, so I jumped at it.

I didn’t really go up there with a plan, rather I wanted to show up with my guitar and a notebook and a few things and sort of see what transpired. Unsurprisingly, what transpired was me spending a ton of time sitting on the porch and just listening to the sounds of upstate New York, which, for anyone who has spent much time in the region, are plentiful and lush. I ended up doing the sort of thing that every composer does at some point where they start trying to transcribe birdcalls, but through this initial and kind of rudimentary impulse I started to unlock a well of frustration that I rarely let myself experience let alone express to others.

In short, I found that I was fucking mad. Like really mad. Mad at basically anyone over the age of somewhere around 45 for letting things get to this point.
(it’s hard to quantify exactly, and apologies if this comes across as arrogant, ageist, and self serving, but I wanted to paint a picture of my thought process at the time and for better or worse, this was it)

 For letting fossil fule companies pull the narrative out from under us, for letting CO2 emissions blow past the 2 degrees celsius point that I had spent my formative years being told we really really can’t let it go past. For creating an ideology that forces you to focus on your career (whether it is a traditional career path or a creative one) to the point of not only ignoring your bodies own natural wants and needs, but also the needs of the planet. 
So the piece ended up coming out as this odd mixture between birdsong and ambience alongside my feelings of frustration around the planetary crisis we have fully entered due to what I perceived as negligence of those who had come before me. This frustration came out through my relationship with death metal music. It’s a piece where a peaceful and serene soundscapes build to a screaming wail of frustration. 

Anyway, it’s been 5 years now and a lot has changed in the interim. I created and recorded a draft of the work at CalArts that I, in hindsight, really don’t like and have never released. Additionally, during my time at CalArts I was fortunate to have another residency at Hambidge Center in Northern Georgia. During my two weeks in this region, I spent most of my time on hikes taking field recordings and I began to draw sonic parallels between the Southern Appalachian region I experienced there with the Northern Appalachian foliage and climate that I was more accustomed to in Western PA and Upstate NY. 

As of now I’ve completely scrapped the recording I made at CalArts which was full of samples I found online and guitar tracking that had the pristine quality of a film score. Since Spring ‘24 I’ve been working on a new version that explores an extended durational sequence for the work, exclusively field recordings that I have taken myself (with one very specific exception of a really high-quality birdcall I found oline that I can’t bring myself to do away with), and guitar tones recorded with my friend Joey in his home studio to get a gritier and in many ways more honest guitar sound.

I still have a long way to go on the piece. The mixing process is part of the composition process, the recording itself is just tracking a variety of loops and textures to be mixed down and organized later. This is a process I’ve been engaged in off-and-on for about 6 months now. On this page, you’ll find a 5 minute sample of a section from the middle of what will be a 15-25 minute EP. Also I should add the caveat that this sample is unfinished. Since I cut it I’ve gone on to record drum and bass parts with Joey that are not reflected here as well as some upright bass sections with my dear friend June Youngblood that I have yet to integrate. Also it is still unmastered so you may have to turn your computer volume up rather loud for the sample to reach regular listening volume, but I wanted to share a small sense of what has preoccupied me so thoroughly this past half a year.