New EP Almost Finished!

Hello Reader, There's a lot of new music on the horizon! A plethora of updates! First of all, my second album "Artificial Individual" is finally back on Spotify. You can go forth and listen for free whenever you like. I've also uploaded "White Noise 'Modern Mix'" to all online platforms. DreamState is still in production. I'm hoping to have the massive double album out by the year's end. In the mean time, I've been writing and rewriting. I had a feeling DreamState would take a little bit longer than I wanted it to, so I started working on an EP to fill the gap. That single EP turned into a series of EPs: Faded Photographs. The general idea is that each EP will have some sort of theme and each of the 4 songs on the EP will fit that theme somehow. For example, the first installment "Sepia Tone" is all about the passage of time. That actually brings up another point, each of these EPs will receive a subtitle based on a photography term that coincides with the theme in some way. Being that I've upgraded my new studio "Silktone Studios" with a brand new analog board and interface, my goal with this series is to get more music out to you at a faster pace. I won't sit around on an album for 2-10 years because I can mix a song as soon as it's recorded these days. Faded Photographs I: Sepia Tone is about loss... the loss of time specifically. As anybody who has casually listened to anything I've written in the past would know, I'm kind of obsessed with the subject. The existential dread haunts me more than I care to admit. The first track, Faded Photographs, was a song I wrote in 2008. The irony I created in that song is really driven home with the line that specifically calls me out on it "The day is gone, the hour's late, the irony that we create in our faded photographs." The second track is called "Not Forgotten" and it's about my grandparent's old house. Technically, I spent a few years living there, so I guess it was my house too in a way. The house was abandoned some years ago and has really deteriorated since. It's a conflicting situation. I certainly like being able to see that the house is still there, but in some ways, I'd rather it be torn down. I can picture the ghosts of my childhood walking through those rooms and in the backyard. I can see memories playing out before me, but they don't really comfort me in any way. The house stands as a grim reminder that I'm not what I used to be and that in a way, I've already died before. How can I say that I've been living the same connected experience, when so much of it is disconnected? Silver Lining is the third track, and if you think this is going to be the "happy" track, you really don't know me yet, do you? I started writing this in 2009 as a song called "Julian." As is typically the case with my older songs, I really liked the music, but the words needed some work. So I got to work and restructured the song a bit. I removed an extended outro, because it technically belongs to a DreamState song that I wrote BEFORE Julian, but now need again for the resurrected DreamState project. I changed the words around a bit and now you have Silver Lining. It's about unfounded optimism. The sort of "everything will be okay" optimism. I can't stand that "everything happens for a reason" mentality. Nothing happens for a reason. Everything is chaos. The last track on Sepia Tone is called "Day by Day" and it's about wasting all our time working. I really brought it home with the sadness this time. This song is a bit adventurous in terms of arrangement. I decided that since the other three tracks on this EP are straightforward piano pop songs, I'd go a little deeper with this last track. There are strings, horns, woodwinds, and more! I've been working on a film score and working on DreamState for a while now and both have some very elaborate orchestral arrangements. I guess I just feel confident with my arrangements now. I felt like this song needed something more. In terms of meaning, it's pretty self explanatory. We only have one life and we spend 1/3 or more of it working, 1/3 sleeping, and the other 1/3 (or less) actually living. Then we die. Well Reader, if you made it this far, I apologize for making you sad. The EP will be out in a few weeks and then you can be sad again. What's so bad about being sad? Here's the music video for the title track, if you're interested: