My new single, Respire, is now released via my Meristem Music! It’s available to stream on all services (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) and can be downloaded directly from me via Bandcamp.
Dig in!
My new single, Respire, is now released via my Meristem Music! It’s available to stream on all services (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) and can be downloaded directly from me via Bandcamp.
Dig in!
I recorded “Respire” in 2014 as a way to rediscover my own breath.
I sang in falsetto with a resonant space in my mouth but lips closed and vibrating slightly. I was inspired by how Arve Henriksen makes his trumpet sound like a cooing voice. I tried to do the opposite: make my voice sound like a gospel-inflected cousin of a trumpet, theremin, or flute. Doing so got me out of my own head and into my body.
Then I brought in the accordion, which also breathes: vibrating chords and the simple pull and push of air.
I put the resulting piece away for another time—until the COVID-19 pandemic, when I returned to “Respire” and finished the mix.
So many have suffered, struggled to breathe, and lost their breath entirely to COVID-19. “Respire” reminds me to be grateful for my breath and all that might flow from it.
May you, the listener, breathe easy and be well.
“Respire” will be released digitally by Meristem Music on March 12, 2021 via Bandcamp and all streaming platforms.
I’m releasing a new single, “Respire,” on March 12, 2021! It will be available for download on Bandcamp and for streaming on all the usual platforms.
“Respire” is a meditation for wordless voice and accordion, and it’s radically different from my previous release, the Singing Is Contagious EP.
I’ll share the story behind the single during the coming weeks.
Your sparrow in memory dives to snap up a gleaming fly. Can you not face it? Your sparrow is dead: undone in dirt by crawly things, sipped up by a twisted root. You do not smell the rot in your heart: you never had shovels for hands.
Published as lyrics for Matthew S. Rosin’s Singing Is Contagious EP, 2020.
Your vast imagined edifice is but air: a balloon, pricked. You have always been bleeding. Could you know your wound? Smile kindly upon it? Begin again?
Published as lyrics for Matthew S. Rosin’s Singing Is Contagious EP, 2020.