This album began as random riffs and chords played on a guitar while distracting myself from heart break by binging television during the pandemic. My friend and former house mate Benjamin Brown used to say that if I was good at anything musically, it was playing the same thing over and over, again and again. I began to take note of what I was absent-mindedly playing in my quarantine/breakup haze, and would pause what I was watching to record these phrases.

I had also been thinking about the beauty of improvisation, and the flowing of ideas that can happen when musicians get together and play off each other. I was missing that greatly, especially due to the pandemic. I wanted to find ways to get as close to that space on my own, in the absence of fellow musicians.

There was very little editing done to the parts I played for that reason. I wanted to feel like I was jamming with the other musicians on the album, even though "they" were me. Most of the parts are first takes, off the cuff ideas that were dictated by what was already being played by the other instruments that had been recorded earlier. Even the drum machine parts were mostly "performed live." For that reason there are lots of imperfections in these songs. I didn't want to agonize over coming up with the perfect part for each instrument. I just wanted to play music.

The parallels abound. Music, relationships, life - these can be conducted like a grocery list of character traits, deal breakers, endless editing, endless scrolling, endless swiping. Or they can be experienced and participated in with curiosity, wonder, abandonment, soul. It is a matter of where your ambitions lie. These songs are an exploration and meditation on the second type of ambition, which is always available but is often found only after the first kind leaves us cold and wanting.

Seth Woods (twp)
October 1, 2020