As I strive (and fail so gracefully) to be a weekly newsletter, I often don’t meet that goal. I’ve never advertised myself as such, but it’s always been the bar I’m measured my attention to this with. So, it may be surprising that this week, I’ve got two posts for you!
I hope y’all are enjoying the video archive post from Tuesday. I’ve heard back from several readers who remember watching some of the educational videos in that article while they were in school. I’m so glad to have been able to present them here for some of you to see again, and many of you to see for the first time.
This extra entry for the week will be a shorter post, mostly just to inform all of y’all that my newest release on Bandcamp is out now!
It’s called Velvet Tea: Dumb Beats Vol. 6, and will be available exclusively on Bandcamp. If you’ve been following for awhile, many of the tracks have trickled out over the past year on my Youtube channel, but there are several new songs as well. I’ve also put together a physical media release in the form of cassettes. All the info is available on my Bandcamp. Below, you’ll find the album itself, extra artwork, liner notes and thoughts, and photos of the physical release.
Thanks so much for tuning in!
ファジーティー
It was imperative for my mental health to take nearly a year off, but believe me it felt like a decade. In 2020, I spend nearly every evening creating (and many afternoons too). It was exhilarating at the time. I had more free time than I’d had since middle-school summers and the world was telling me not to breathe anyone else’s air, so I stayed inside with my record player and my SP-404. In a year, I had made over 4 hours of music.
After I released Commercial Break, I well… took a break. I didn’t know how long the break would last, but I was busy again, and if I wanted to continue with even a fraction of the output from the year prior, I was going to have to sacrifice some other portion of my life (sleep, friendship, work, etc) and I wasn’t willing to do that.
Creating was always supposed to be meditation time for me, but my obsessiveness with numbers and watching them go up can really get in the way of my intentions with music. I needed a reset, and I loved hearing from everyone about how much anticipation there was for the new music, but I never let myself feel bad for knowing I hadn’t even started on it.
So now it’s nearly spring in 2022 and I’ve got a whole hour’s worth of new music. Even in my “break” i worked on stuff. I can’t just stop completely, I find that impossible. I’ve found a new space in my life for music again, and it’s calming and the early reviews for my newest release are positive. I still feel motivated for the next one, and tapes are running out fast (the warmest feeling in the world). Thanks for listening and reading and supporting.
Thank you to Molly and Indigo and Jon and Abbey and Rach and Rih. Thank you to all the weirdo Craigslist fellahs I’ve bought video tapes off of the past year. Thanks to Emma at Asian1. Thanks to Andre Navarro. Thanks to every thrift store employee who’s ever given me a bulk deal without me asking. Thanks to Finders Keepers for hooking me up with a TON of cassettes too. And thank you to Crystal Gayle (if you’re reading this call me).
This release was different to me in many ways, but if you’ve followed my work for the past 5 years or so, you’ll notice the main difference immediately. I… played a bunch of different instruments for this. I didn’t sample everything. I borrowed synths and drums and I bought and sold a bass during the making of this tape (I’m not a bassist). I love the idea of mastering and constantly iterating in some niche way, and I think of what I’m doing as just that, but becoming a virtuoso of any single instrument has never been something I wanted.
I played a chord organ, a singing bowl, pan flute, multiple Yamaha PSS series synths, a banjo-lele. I borrowed a Moog Little Phatty for a day but the owner dropped it the week before while loading it in his van and the audio-outs weren’t working so I never recorded with it. I played my families old upright piano for this.
I’ve never had more fun in my life making something. And now, all I want to do is go back to sampling all the records (and maybe a movie or two) I’ve accumulated in the past year. I want to build new folders full of old music other people have thrown away and I want to make something that inspires other people to do the same.
I do want to buy a pan flute though. Like out of all the instruments I borrowed to mess around with for this tape, that’s the one I gotta get back. In an upcoming article, I’ll talk all about everything I was listening to in 2021 while I was making this. Not necessarily direct inspiration, but definitely everything I listened to or watched last year and some effect on what I was making.
Anyways, my next project with be very back-to-form for me, and in a month or so, I’ll start posting about the progress on that, but for now, thank you so much again for reading, listening and supporting.
As always, if you have any questions or comments you can get at me here or here or leave a comment below this post. If you haven’t subscribed to this newsletter yet (it’s free) please think about doing so.
See you soon!
—Forrest
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