2024 was a slow year for me in terms of output. Dealing with fibromyalgia/long COVID greatly limited my ability not just to record, but perform music at all. All this has caused me to reflect on the gift of music and life in general. Recording is documenting life after all, and documentation is great for reflection and gratitude. So for the first time, I want to share with you the gifts of recording that came to me from this year.

Alight Beyond the Sea

My partner Jessica Gerhardt put out her debut album, Alight Beyond the Sea, a record made over the span of five years, full of collaborations with several producers. I had the joy of producing “Psalm 139” and “Impatience,” co-producing “Eyelash to Eyelash” alongside Boi Xochi, and mixing half the record. I also played guitar on two songs I didn’t produce: “Paper Crane” and “Suscipe.” This album features some of the work I’m most proud of. Throughout the whole process, I admire Jess’s commitment to not just doing it well but doing good. She spent a lot of time thinking about how best to uplift her collaborators (all ships rise with the tide) and how to make music COVID-safer. Finally getting to share this record and play in the band for the release show was such a treat. This is an album for asking questions and waiting, as Stephanie Espinoza wrote, for fans of Sinéad O’Connor, Fiona Apple, and left-of-center devotional music.

333

I first met Aria Liang, then a film school student with great musical promise, when an acquaintance of mine recommended me to her as a voice coach. When Aria reached out to me again a year or two after our last voice lesson, I was so excited to help record her music. I think just about any soft-spoken artist can relate to the story told in this song, the longing to be seen and even admired by someone else, reflected in the sound of a lonely street saxophonist at the end of the track. Lawrence Pi played the part and fuckin’ nailed the vibe. What I love about Aria’s style is how cinematic and centered on storytelling it is. To allow the lyrics to take center stage, Aria’s vision offered me a lesson in restraint in pop production. We just started working on another single, and it has been even more fun to create, so keep an eye on her. Add this to your playlists if you’re a fan of Dominic Fike, Mitski, and lofi to chill to.

Tupesto

“Into the Light” was the first song Jess and I ever wrote together, back when we were co-facilitating a songwriting workshop in 2021. That Spring, Jess’s Grandma Libi passed away, in whose honor we wrote this song. We had sat with it for some time, performing it occasionally, receiving encouraging feedback on it, until we decided this year we were ready to launch our duo project, Tupesto. We used a bunch of our grandparents’ instruments, like Grandma Libi’s hand drums and shakers and my Opa’s cuatro. This track was also my first attempt at some botanica sound design, which I fell in love with this year. If you’d like to purchase it on Bandcamp, we’re donating to the memorial fund of Alena and Stephen Ayers. Or you can download it for $0 and donate yourself (that way Bandcamp doesn’t take a cut). This one is for fans of The Swell Season, The Album Leaf, and twee for the 2020s.

Open Door

My friend Ramsey Lee came to me in the Spring about doing a cathartic synth pop track with a little bit of experimentation, which was great because I loved her last record and this kinda thing was just what I was itching to do at the time. We were attempting to create an arrangement of interlocking rhythm parts, as inspired by Talking Heads, while also going pedal-to-metal with some certified bop tropes. I had such fun programming drum machines and working with Kevin Brown, who provided live drums. The auxiliary toms that have their moment at the climax of the song are perhaps my favorite part (though I also really loved sculpting the piano tone—a mix of Pianoteq with some Korg M1 samples for an old-school house vibe). In this song about a friendship break-up, Ramsey has struck a masterful balance in tone that is at once empowered without being vengeful and conciliatory without being codependent. It’s a boundaries anthem for fans of Lucius, Florence and the Machine, and ’90s femme power ballads.

Protest Songs

Witnessing Israel’s and the US’s genocide of Palestinians this year put everything into perspective for me and gave me a new why for making music. Cesar A. Cruz says, “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” This was the year I found the courage to show up, speak up, and act up, and in this work, I found my voice as a protest songwriter. I wrote “‘Til Everybody’s Free” as a retort against the propaganda spread by homonationalists and Islamophobes that Palestinian liberation is somehow incompatible with queer liberation. I recorded a cover of Bill Fay’s “War Machine,” which has been a balm to my soul and an anthem for my Christian anarchism. And I did a quick job on “Is That a Threat or a Promise?” a reflection on the failures of electoralism and liberalism, just a couple weeks before election day, showing me I can indeed make art fast and loose (and so can you, if you quit perfectionism). The two originals are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, which means you can copy, redistribute, and remix this song so long as you provide attribution and share it under the same license. If you’d like stems, send me an email. 🙂

Thank you all for a great year of music, all things considered. I anticipate we will have lots to sing about in 2025, so if you need any help recording and sharing your music, hit me up. 🙂 You can find my contact under the studio page.

Peace,
Arend