charles van kirk

In the summer of 2021, I rode my bicycle 3,924 miles across the USA from my home on the Atlantic Ocean in Maine to the Pacific Ocean in Florence, Oregon. I packed a small audio recorder in my handlebar bag and made recordings throughout the journey across 14 states.

Along with some close friends, I have made an album inspired by the sounds that I heard and by the people that I met on the trip. Some of the field recordings have been used as textural instruments and as sound design in the songs. There are percussive beats made from corn husks rustling in Iowa, volcanic rocks in Oregon and insects buzzing in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

The songs include stories about the kindness of strangers, the vast beauty and weirdness of the United States and about the places one’s mind wanders during 2 months alone on the road traveling at 10 miles per hour.

This is the first single on the album.

Credits:

Sarah Jarosz: vocals

Nat Smith: cellos

Christopher Marion: strings

Christian Li: synth bass and piano

Asher Kurtz: electric guitars

Mike Bono: acoustic guitars

Michael Sachs: woodwinds

Tim Foust: background vocals

I produced the music, played felt piano, drums and sang lead.

I engineered and mixed this music with additional work from Andy Baldwin. Joe Laporta mastered it.

In early 2020, Josh Robertson and I travelled to southern Iceland to record sounds on and around the Vatnajökull glacier for Splice. Upon returning to New York, I made music using the sounds of the ice as a sonic tribute to the glacier.

There is a lot to say about this trip, and about the sounds that came from it. I have written an essay, which is excerpted on the Splice sample pack page.

Two wonderful videos have also been produced about the trip, one by Splice and one by the incredible director Jordan Taylor Fuller for ABC.

In order to showcase all of the sounds that we recorded, I made a song for Splice using exclusively our recordings from the trip. The last video here features that finished song. The images are a slideshow of Josh’s incredible photos.

Salmon farming can wreak havoc on marine ecosystems. Wherever there is an open pen salmon farm, there is a danger that chemicals and disease from the farmed fish will spread to nearby wild salmon populations and to other marine life. For example, sea lice are a leading cause of fish mortality for wild Pacific Salmon in proximity to farms. 

In 2017, Hereditary Chief Ernest Alfred from the Nam’gis, Tlowit’sis and Mamalilikala First Nations looked at underwater footage of sea lice infested salmon and decided to do something about it. He and other members of the First Nations community occupied salmon farms near Swanson and Midsummer Islands in the Broughton Archipelago, British Columbia. The occupation lasted for 284 days. After an extensive political and judicial confrontation, the First Nations protesters were ultimately successful in eradicating many of the salmon farms from their territory. While marine life has been recovering significantly since this victory, some salmon farms still remain in the neighboring areas.

Sponsored by Splice, I traveled with Max Belau and Marisa McIvor to the Broughton Archipelago to meet Ernest and local filmmaker Brian Hockenstein in order to learn about what sounds are distinctive to the area. We made recordings above and below water of humpback whales, sea lions, kelp forests, cedar trees, and even some of the remaining salmon farms. I transformed these sounds into instruments and music inspired by the biodiversity of the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw territory. 

On the subject of harvesting and using these sounds from this sacred place, Ernest said.

“When you take a sound or a photograph or a video within this area, I think there’s an expectation that people share that…but to do so with good intentions and respect. We all have it within ourselves to learn and the capacity to understand that these things are not ours, and that we just borrow. That we’re only here to caretake for the next generations that are following.”

Special thanks to Ernest Alfred, the U’mista Cultural Centre, Aubrey Johnston and Captain Nicolette Audy. 

Here is a link to the sounds on Splice.

Two years ago, I found myself lying on my back in the snow in the middle of the night. I had just finished a recording session with friends in New Hampshire. Several of us decided to hike out into the woods across from the White Mountains. We didn’t say anything to each other, but just stopped and lay there for awhile as snowflakes danced on our faces.

I thought about our vulnerability and receptiveness when we’re in this position: lying on our backs. It is something that we do when we’re asleep, when we’re making love, or when we’re communing with the snowy ground. I began writing songs with this in mind, for a gesture that unifies us in our vulnerability.

Vinyl of the album is available for sale here.

Produced by Charles Van Kirk

Additional Production by Christopher Marion

Engineered by Pran Bandi and Charles Van Kirk

Mixed by Andy Baldwin

Mastered by Joe LaPorta at Sterling Sound

Cover Artwork by Nu Som

Tuarrah:

Charles Van Kirk: drums, synths, background vocals

Christopher Marion: strings, percussion

Julia Easterlin: lead vocals

Christian Li: piano, synths

Asher Kurtz: guitar

Spencer Stewart: bass

Also featuring:

Sarah Jarosz: background vocals

David Crowell: saxophones

Alec Spiegelman: clarinet

Travis Antoine: trumpet

In late 2022, I flew to Coca Cola recycling and bottling facilities in Asheville, Atlanta and Los Angeles in search of interesting sounds. The idea behind this project, conceived by some wonderful folks at M&C Saatchi led by Nicholas Rotondi and directed by artist extraordinaire Andre Bato, is to use sampling as a metaphor for recycling. Old snippets of music are broken down, stretched out and sculpted into something new, as are bottles and containers.

The sounds that I recorded were edited by Stelios Phili and myself into a suite of percussive and tonal one shots. I built a drum kit with some of my favorite samples and recorded grooves using Sensory Percussion. These sounds served as the source material from which Mark Ronson and Madlib made tracks. The tracks constitute an EP which is available here, along with an online sampler where users can play with the material themselves.

It was a pleasure to work with this whole crew, all of whom are excellent humans on the production and agency sides. It was also of course a huge treat to hear what Mark and Madlib did with the raw material that I put on tape.

Partial credits for this film include:

Director: Andre Bato

DP: Anthony Carella

Production: Maximilian Kurzweil

Agency: Nicholas Rotondi, Jocelyn Scanlon, Maddy Franklin, Mimi Chang

Additional Music: Jean

Sound Design: me

I have been a fan of No Laying Up for years, a group of golf obsessed gents telling stories with visuals and sound. For golf fans, NLU needs no introduction. For non-golf fans, it’s pretty easy to become enamored with their group dynamic and storytelling skills. This film is our first collaboration; The Old Course Reversed is a piece about the home of golf re-contextualized. It's a look at a place - St. Andrews, Scotland - through the lenses of community, history and friendship.

I mixed the audio for the film and synced some music with it, including two pieces from Hannah Read's Fungi Sessions Album as well as music from my latest album.

Thanks to D.J. and Justine Piehowski for bringing me on board, and kudos to the whole NLU team for doing an amazing job telling this story.

In the summer of 2021, I rode my bicycle 3,900 miles across the USA from the Atlantic coast in Maine to the Pacific Ocean in Oregon. I packed a Zoom H6 in my handlebar bag and made recordings throughout the two month long journey through fourteen states.

My intention for this trip is to tell a story about sounds with a sense of place and about traveling in a way that’s friendly to the environment.

There will be lots of music and film released from this trip, the first of which includes highlights of my audio recordings gathered for a two part release with Splice on their Explores label. In each sample pack, there are hundreds of sounds that chronicle my trip across the country. There are sounds from the side of the road: trains crossing the South Dakota prairie and thunderstorms crackling over Iowa cornfields. There are sounds from national parks: bison grunting and geysers erupting in Montana. There are sounds from inside a tent: rivers rushing and coyotes howling in the middle of the night.

These teaser videos include drone and iPhone footage that I shot during the trip as well as some gorgeous images made by my good friend Brad Wickham in Montana.

The piece of music in the first film begins with a vocal that I improvised in a tunnel next to Lake Erie on a rainy day in July. Back in my studio, I experimented by multiplying and tuning copies of the vocal to build harmonies. I was pleasantly surprised by the prettiness of it and by the strangeness of the birds and rain phasing against each other in the background. The percussion ‘kit’ was created entirely with field recordings using the wonderful tool of Sensory Percussion. Christopher Marion played the strings toward the end of the piece.

The molten core of the earth is often referred to as the sun beneath our feet. 4,000 miles down the temperatures can reach the same as those found on the surface of the sun. It is estimated that 0.1% of the heat content of Earth could supply humanity’s total energy needs for 2 million years. Harnessing this energy is expensive and difficult, but less so in Iceland where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.

This Splice Explores sample pack asks the questions: What are the sounds of geothermal energy in Iceland? What can we do as species to more effectively harness the power of this renewable energy in the future?

In May of 2022, I traveled with Max Belau along the fault line in the northeast and southwest of Iceland to record physical manifestations of geothermal energy: bubbling mud pots, steaming fumaroles and lava rocks from Iceland's youngest volcano. We also made recordings at Iceland's largest geothermal power plant, at a tomato greenhouse that is powered by a nearby hot spring, and at a geothermal bakery where ancestral rye bread is buried in hot sand for 24 hours. In addition to the hundreds of one shots and foley, I built percussive kits and synthesizers using these field recordings and wrote the music contained in this pack.

Our hope is that these sounds inspire conversations about solving the engineering problems required to harvest geothermal energy in other parts of the world where it is less geologically advantageous to do so and to therefore reduce our collective dependency on oil, gas and coal.

The track features additional vocals by Jenika Marion, guitars by Mike Bono and strings by Christopher Marion.

The sample pack is available on Splice here.

Special thanks to the On Geothermal Energy Exhibition, Fridheimar Greenhouse and Laugarvatn Fontana Bakery.

Hannah Read is a dear friend of mine from Edinburgh, Scotland. Her father Nick Read was a notable fungal cell biologist based later in his career at the University of Manchester. After Nick passed away, Hannah re-connected with some of his former colleagues. Through one of these connections, the opportunity arose for a commissioned album inspired by different varieties of fungi.

Hannah asked me to help connect the recordings sonically with the natural world, so I took the music into the woods of Maine on headphones and overdubbed parts using whatever I found on the forest floor: soil, birch bark, pieces of mushrooms, etc.

The result is this beautiful suite of compositions featuring Hannah’s fiddle and guitar playing, banjo from Michael Starkey, upright bass by Jeff Picker and extra fiddle textures by Edward Wallace. It was engineered by Mattie Foulds. I mixed and mastered it.

I encourage you to listen to this album in its entirety while walking through the woods.

During the early part of the pandemic, I was commissioned by two different companies, Splice and Sparks.fm, to record the sounds of household objects and turn them into music. I have been experimenting with making music from ‘found sounds’ for years, so I relished the opportunity to make something from home during a period of prolonged social isolation.

The simple idea was to look differently at the objects that I am accustomed to seeing all day, every day. What do they have to say sonically? I tried to tease out tones and textures from those objects and have a bit of fun with it. The result was hundreds of individual sounds, from which I chose a few dozen favorites and created this short piece of music with accompanying video.

The individual sounds are available on Splice here and the track is available for licensing via Sparks.fm here.

This film is a trailer for a collaboration between Ralph Lauren and Morehouse & Spelman Colleges to honor the fashion traditions at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. It was creative directed by James Jeter and directed by Joshua Renfroe. My good friend Joe Simons with CVLT Production edited the piece and I am honored that they brought me in to mix it.

I have been thinking for quite a while that I’d like to find an excuse to work with Sarah in the studio. We’ve known each other since our college days in Boston, and her albums have all been in regular rotation in my car and on my record player. It hasn’t been surprising to watch her and her band get lots of well deserved attention for their work.

I wrote this song with Sarah in mind and managed to catch her on a break from touring. I thought it would be fun to hear her tell this story of nostalgia for a former lover who is constantly fleeing the idea of getting older.

This track features a handful of other incredible friends: Christopher Marion (strings), Asher Kurtz (guitar), Spencer Stewart (bass) and Alec Spiegelman (woodwinds). I wrote, produced, engineered and mixed the track as well as played drums, piano and sang background vocals. It was mastered by Joe LaPorta at Sterling Sound. The artwork was made by my legendary friend, Michael Patterson. 

Sometimes I hear someone’s voice and know immediately that we’re going to end up in the studio together. Luisa Marion is the younger sister of one of my close friends, so I’ve been hearing recordings of her sing since she was a little kid riffing over the blues at 4 years old. Now she is a woman with an incredible sound and distinctive personality on the microphone.

I wrote two songs as an excuse to get Luisa in the studio: “The Voyeur” and “Take Me With You.” They are based on conversations that we’ve had together about her life and relationships in college.

Asher Kurtz and Mike Bono are featured on guitars in both of these songs. The songs were mixed by the inimitable Andy Baldwin and mastered by Kevin Reeves.

My good friends Dave Schmidt and Erin Collett at Naked City Films reached out to me about producing a version of the classic Vincent Youmans and Irving Caesar song “Tea For Two” for Harney & Sons. I have a soft spot for Harney & Sons because the company was founded in Connecticut, the state in which I grew up. I drank their tea often as a kid, and it was served in the restaurant where I worked as a teenager.

“Tea For Two” has indeed been performed many times, notably by Doris Day in this enchanting version from the 1950 film. As with any cover, I wanted to take a different approach and bring something new to the composition. For this, I called my dear friend Julia Easterlin - whose creativity knows no bounds - and asked her to come up with an arrangement based on some ideas that I had about the tone and instrumentation. Julia came back with a magical demo, as usual. We took her ideas into the studio and our first recorded version ended up on the spot.

Dave, Erin and the crew at Naked City did an absolutely gorgeous job with the visuals of this piece. Their footage feels quite personal; all of the characters come across to me as utterly realistic and not forced in their performances. Dave also edited the film to our track, which always helps.

I have never worked with anyone quite like Julia Easterlin (aka Hite). We met at summer camp - let's be honest, band camp - when we were 17 years old. In 2014, I asked her to be a part of Tuarrah as our lead vocalist before I had written any music. Once during a Tuarrah vocal session, Julia stopped me as I was about to press record and said something to the effect of:

"I have something that's been on my mind that I need to say."

Me: "Ok..."

Julia: "I want you and Christopher (my Tuarrah collaborator) to help me finish my album."

This album became 'Light of A Strange Day.' We only had a few weeks before the label needed mixes and the album was not as far along as it needed to be. I was due to spend a month in Amsterdam starting the following week, so we crammed overdub sessions at my apartment to finish Julia's vocals. The spirit of this mad dash comes across in the outro to "Hattnaru"; Julia and I set up floor toms in my living room and went wild, inspired by her invented language and Christopher's incredible Bollywood-esque strings.

With a limited set of tools, I finished recording percussion for "Eliza Jane" and "If You Begin To Notice" in the kitchen of my Dutch apartment. You'll hear all kinds of pots and pans and prepared sounds from objects that I found laying around. I also manufactured the 'organ' sound in "Old Crow" from samples that I made of an e-bowed acoustic guitar. This was a surreal song to work on, because I first heard a version of it when Julia and I were in college together ten years ago. The original iteration consisted of a single live vocal take (the same take that we ended up using on this album). Julia had recorded it while lying on her back, wrapped in a blanket. I was so mystified when I first heard this recording, that it took me a while to allow myself into the idea of finishing the production all these years later. Christopher had a similar reaction, throwing out days of work on his first attempts at the string arrangement before sending them to us. When he finally did send them, we were floored.

Listening to the album now feels like a tapestry of many different shades from Julia's life, which indeed it is. She didn't hold anything back here, and for that reason alone I find it is worthy of many listens. Shahzad Ismaily helped immensely in the first half of the recording process. It was honor for Christopher and me to step in and help finish the job.

The first time I met Brad Hinkle, he told me about a documentary that he was making about a team of women who had all survived breast cancer and were in the process of training for an international dragon boating competition in Italy. I asked him 100 questions about it and then told him that I wanted to write the music for the film.

My wish came true, and I’m quite proud of how it turned out. Brad has managed to tell this bittersweet story in a captivating 17 minutes. Once you start watching, it’s necessary to finish.

My good friend Erin Collett called me out of blue to say that he had access to a very fancy camera for one day. Tomorrow. He asked if I wanted to make something, and I immediately called my wonderful dancer friends: Lindsey (Lou) Mandolini and Maggie Segale.

We came up with a simple premise for the shoot and met at golden hour on the pier in Greenpoint. Here is the result.

My dear friend Beau Burrows has the delightful habit of buying interesting toys and lending them to me. Case in point: the Rav Vast, a hand pan drum from Russia. The Rav Vast has an astonishing resonance thanks to steel cut keys and rich harmonic overtones. The notes of the drum constantly sympathize with one another and linger for many seconds after each attack.

I promised Beau that I would make some nice recordings of the instrument while it was in my possession. Enter, the lovely folks at Splice. I have been fortunate to get commissioned by Splice to create several sample packs for their platform. This is the first one to be released!

There are hundreds of sounds of the instrument faithfully captured in the sample pack with its pristine, shimmery qualities, but my favorites might be the instances in which I aggressively distorted the Rav Vast with guitar pedals to embrace its rich harmonic content. These sounds are available for Splice members to use on their tracks, royalty free!

Here is a link to the Splice pack.

For the past few years, I have been the mastering engineer for my dear friends, the powerhouse band Iris Lune. They have a new record called Love Loss Love, and this time I was lucky enough to mix it. The album was written and produced by one of my favorite musical couples, the Israeli / Texan duo of Ella Meir and Asher Kurtz.

Ella and Asher have taken deeply personal and often heart-wrenching stories about grief and loss and presented them with staggering attention to detail. The production is expansive and the songs were a pleasure to mix. Angelo Spampinato and Aaron Liao played their asses off in the rhythm section, as usual. Joe LaPorta at Sterling Sound blew our minds with his mastering work.

Tuarrah is a project that I started with Christopher Marion. He and I wrote the music for this first album and produced it on nights and weekends over the course of three years. We recorded it in Brooklyn, Nashville, Los Angeles and at a 12th century castle in Fosdinovo, Italy.

We wanted these songs to sound like what you feel when you look at the ocean. The more music we wrote, the more we began to feel like guests on this planet. As a result, many of the lyrics and sonic choices are attempts to translate that feeling.

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"Let the earth speak of its travels, fighting all its brazen dwellers.

Let the tide run whirling courses, and wrap them in your corner room."

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Vistas was written from the perspective of the land on which a battle has taken place. 

“Maybe it’s nobody’s war. Not even yours…”

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Yellowstone is another homage to natural beauty.

“Sea air breathes on them

brushing sunlight through

all those silky strands

running through my hands”

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The Map was based on D.W. Griffith’s 1910 film ‘The Unchanging Sea.’ 

“Deeper to the west, as the sun went down to say

strike a deal with our ways

so show me the map you drew,

show me the map you drew”

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Le Pont was inspired by a trip that Christopher and I took through France and Italy after college. We layered field recordings from Milan and Paris with Christopher’s gorgeous strings. 

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Tuarrah exists primarily in the studio and has evolved to include several of our closest friends in a rotating cast. They are Julia Easterlin, Christian Li, Asher Kurtz, Mike Bono and Spencer Stewart.

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Buy the album here.

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The full credits are below:

Produced by: Charlie Van Kirk and Christopher Marion
Engineered and Mixed by: Charlie Van Kirk
Additional Engineering: Andy Baldwin, Adrian Trujillo
Mastered by: Kevin Reeves
Photography and Graphic Design: Adam Moskowitz
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Let The Earth Speak - (Van Kirk) 
Charlie Van Kirk: vocals, drums, percussion, synthesizers
Julia Easterlin: vocals
Mike Bono: acoustic guitars
Christopher Marion: electric guitars, percussion
Spencer Stewart: bass
Asher Kurz: electric guitars
Ben Flocks: saxophones

Horizon’s Brow - (Van Kirk) 
Charlie Van Kirk: vocals, percussion, synthesizers, bass, electric guitar, tack piano
Julia Easterlin: vocals
Christopher Marion: acoustic guitars

Vistas - (Marion / Van Kirk) 
Christopher Marion: vocals, guitars, drums, percussion, keyboards
Charlie Van Kirk: drums, percussion, synth bass, wurlitzer
Julia Easterlin: vocals

Le Pont - (Marion / Van Kirk) 
Christopher Marion - strings
Charlie Van Kirk - misc. sounds

Put Your Weapons Down - (Marion / Van Kirk) 
Christopher Marion: vocals, piano, bass, electric guitar, percussion
Julia Easterlin: vocals
Mike Bono: acoustic guitars
Charlie Van Kirk: drums, percussion, ebowed guitars
Luisa Marion: girls choir

Yellowstone - (Marion / Van Kirk) 
Christopher Marion: violins, violas, vocals
Julia Easterlin: vocals
Alec Spiegelman: bass clarinet
Yoed Nir: cello
Spencer Stewart: upright bass
Charlie Van Kirk: percussion

The Map - (Marion / Van Kirk) 
Christopher Marion: vocals/choir, guitars, bass, strings
Charlie Van Kirk: drums, percussion, vocals
Julia Easterlin: vocals

Let The Earth Speak (Reprise) - (Van Kirk) 
Julia Easterlin: vocals
Charlie Van Kirk: vocals, percussion
Mike Bono: acoustic guitars
Christopher Marion: guitars, percussion

Hannah Read is a dear friend of mine from Edinburgh, Scotland. We have collaborated on all of her recorded music as a bandleader. She was the 'Best Han' at my wedding. Below are my album liner notes from her latest LP, "Way Out I'll Wander."

This is an album made in winter. The core trio was recorded in two sessions, almost a year apart. The first took place in New Hampshire. Brenda Shannon Adam treated us like royalty for several days at her home in the White Mountains; we’ll never forget her energy and hospitality. We brought all of the equipment and set up a studio at the Abbey, a cavernous space normally reserved for house concerts.

The second session was held in the Catskills of upstate New York. Our host Andy Baldwin was stranded in Australia waiting for a visa when we arrived, so he gamely talked us through the setup in the middle of the night after we scrambled up his icy driveway carrying instruments. The next morning, we were greeted with a panoramic view over a valley full of barren trees. Somewhere buried in the noise floor of this record, you can hear Andy’s wood stove crackling. 

There is a sense of looking at the past with many of these songs, reflecting on memories of home. Perhaps because of this, it felt important for us to record in quiet places away from the city. There are clear views of Scotland, England and New York in the stories, each examined through a portrait of a specific person or relationship. They form an honest reflection of Hannah in this moment, as someone who remembers her anchor points while spending a great deal of time in motion across the Atlantic.

Enormous credit is due to Jefferson Hamer and Jeff Picker for their musical and personal support in these recordings. They created a strong foundation on which the songs could breathe. The arrangements were worked out live with the band in the studio, which lead to a freshness as the dynamic of each song came together.

The rest of our supporting cast - Alec Spiegelman, Christian Li, Sarah Jarosz, Ben Flocks and Mike Harlan - found their way into the music with grace in the overdubbing stage. Each of them had so much to add with so few notes. It was a delight to work with all of them. 

Siv Jakobsen is a terrific songwriter and performer from Norway. We collaborated on this album of her songs in 2015. The music is evocative of her snowy, hometown landscapes. Christian Li's haunting string arrangements helped transport this music into an otherworldly place.

It is worth checking out Jørgen Nordby's incredible videos produced for the singles on this album (see below).

I’ve been fortunate to work with my friend Andrew Bayer several times over the years, usually in the capacity of coordinating live instrument recordings for his albums.

On his latest album “In My Last Life,” I produced live string recordings for several of the songs including “Immortal Lover” and “Tidal Wave,” both featuring Alison May. I also played drums on “Your Eyes” feat. Ane Brun. This record is full of incredible songwriting and typically brilliant production from Andrew.

I had the pleasure of collaborating with the wonderful director Riley Hooper and the production company goodstory to create the music for this PSA. Riley’s work is focused on documentary filmmaking, and you can feel her thoughtful sensibility come through in this film about caregivers for AARP.

"As boots meet ground / fears hide behind clouds / on this isle Ellis"

Ellis is a song about foreignness. We collaborated with Norwegian director Jørgen Bare to try and humanize this notion of the “other.” I wrote this song from the perspective of someone who finds themselves in an unfamiliar place and attempts to describe that feeling to a loved one.

Jørgen wished to capture that spirit by making the film in a location that was unfamiliar to him: Moscow. Aside from the stark beauty of the city and magnetic presence of young actress Saida Otarova, Russia was not without a bit of culture shock. Jørgen and local producer Varvara Kuznetsova were detained and questioned for several hours by Russian military police after accidentally flying their drone over an unidentified government building. Fortunately, Kuznetsova calmly explained their situation and no one (nor any footage) was harmed. 

Full credits for the song are below:

Produced by Charlie Van Kirk and Christopher Marion

Christian Li - piano

Asher Kurz - guitars

Alec Spiegelman - clarinets

Julia Easterlin - background vocals

Charlie Van Kirk - lead vocals, percussion, synthesizers, engineering, mixing

Mastered by Kevin Reeves

This is my favorite piece that I worked on while at Antfood Music in Brooklyn. It addresses a subject that is extremely difficult to talk about with gentleness and respect.

This film was a huge collaborative effort between BUCK and Antfood. Several of us including Wilson Brown, Sean McGovern, Spencer Casey and Alan Markley spent weeks recording foley, music, sound design and mixing the piece. I was pleased to contribute piano, vocals, analog synthesizers, lots of sound design, and the final mix.

Here are the full credits:

Directed by: BUCK
Executive Creative Director: Ryan Honey
Executive Producer: Maurie Enochson
Producer: Ashley Hsieh
Creative Director: Joshua Harvey
Associate Creative Director: Joe Mullen
Designers: Joshua Harvey, Joe Mullen, Gunnar Pettersson
2D Animators: Laura Yilmaz, Kendra Ryan, Gunnar Pettersson, Claudio Salas, Matt Everton, Thierno Bah, Ege Soyuer, Zach Eastburg, Oliver Dead, Moses Journey
3D Artists: Yates Holley, Alex Dingfelder, Matt Everton
Compositors: Claudio Salas, Alex Dingfelder, Oliver Dead
Music and Sound Design: Antfood

Jenika Marion is a supremely talented musician and storyteller who I’m lucky to count as a member of my ‘Nashville family.’ She wrote most of the songs for this EP over a period of several years with no particular hurry.

A theme that emerged while making this album was that the songs often felt like entries in a journal addressed to a young woman, or perhaps to a younger version of Jenika. It’s a nostalgic record and sometimes a melancholic one, which the cover of Sufjan Stevens’ “The Wasp” illustrates clearly.

Jenika’s brother Christopher pulled a lot of weight with some beautiful performances on this album, as did Christian Li, Matt Osowski, Sarah Jarosz, Justin Branum and Luisa Marion. We were also privileged to include a dobro solo on “Cricket” by one of our heroes, Jerry Douglas. I jumped in for percussion, some miscellaneous background vocals, a bit of electric bass, and mixing. Our mastering hero Kevin Reeves brought this one home.

Spencer (Eugene) Stewart and Lucy (Marie) Horton are two of my closest friends. They are also a dynamic songwriting & performance duo.

When they first approached me about working on their album, I was struck by two things: the weirdness of the demo sounds, which had been made almost entirely from Spencer's field recordings, and Lucy's enigmatic lyrics with a layered approach to vocal production. The initial ideas were fledglings, but had a crazy youthful spirit about them. I had to take on the project despite not having any idea where the music would end up. 

Each week, I am writing and recording one short piece and posting them to Instagram. It’s quite fun to make the recording process visible and to release these on a regular basis.

Occasionally the music I compose for a commercial or film doesn’t make the cut, or it goes to air but I am unable to take credit for it; often there are limitations set by the brand who commissioned the work. Thus, I decided to document my process as if I am writing something for visuals or sketching an idea for an album. I try to limit myself to a couple of hours on each piece.

Iris Lune is a terrific band based in Brooklyn. Their creations are theatrical and highly crafted. Their members are Ella Joy-Meir, Asher Kurtz, Aaron Liao and Angelo Spampinato. Each one of them brings enormous skill and energy to the band.

The production and mixing of Dalton Harts also demands your attention on this album. I jumped in at the end of the process and mastered this EP.

The goal of this Lululemon commercial was to convey the melody of the Canadian National Anthem through sound design sourced from scenes across Canada. It required plenty of experimentation and some dramatic mixing maneuvers, but we succeeded and are quite proud of the result.

I contributed sound design and the final mix to this piece along with the team at Antfood Music in Brooklyn. 

In late 2018, I had the pleasure of mixing an EP for my friend Mike Robinson. To me, this feels like music meant for a long car ride through the barren plains of the midwest. The storytelling is captivating and the band is incredible.

Producer Joe Vilardi used his tasteful instincts to help arrange electric guitars, acoustic guitars, pedal steel, strings and a rhythm section into a cohesive whole.

I spent a year recording one sound every day from my environment. Sometimes these sounds were captured in the studio with high quality microphones and preamps; sometimes I recorded them on my phone.

I spent one day at the end of the year and made this track out of those found sounds. There is chatter from the lobby of the Denver Museum, a train blaring its horn in rural Wisconsin, a water bottle struck with a bit of water inside, and many other similarly random sounds. 

Empyrean Atlas is one of my favorite bands. I first heard them at a live show in Williamsburg and was blown away. Their sound is a beautiful combination of influences; it pulls from the contrapuntal guitar-driven music of Ethiopia and Zimbabwe as well as American minimalist composers. 

David Crowell writes this music and is a wonderfully skilled, humble guy. We have become friends over time as I attended more of his shows and shared Tuarrah with him. I had the pleasure of mastering this album, which introduces acoustic guitars to the palette alongside EA's traditional 'rock band' electric configuration.