1. What is your relationship like with “Nascent” since you released it two years ago?

My relationship with Nascent is always changing; there have been many ups and downs since its release. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to reconcile whether the artistic choices I made on that album are still a part of me. The short answer is yes, but the fact it was ever called into question left me with a lot of confusion. I also haven’t written much music that reaches as deep as Nascent did. There’s a tinge of sadness when I come back to that album because I miss writing music from my heart. I want to lay it all out there, but I don’t know what “it” is right now. I’m figuring it out.

2. In another interview you bring up your physical creative space as an environment that inspires you, “turn the right way” and “paper blinds” being some references to it. How does your environment, as well as the outdoors, help you create?

I often feel like I’m in touch with the best version of myself when I’m out in nature. I try to bring some of that feeling with me when I come back home to write. I’m also very sensitive to my environment and how it changes throughout the seasons. It has a massive influence on how I feel, and by extension, what I write.

3. “Nascent”, as I understand it, is a kind of a Künstlerroman - a coming of age story of an artist struggling with themselves. How did this album push your growth as a person?

Wow, German really does have a word for everything. After a quick search on “Künstlerroman,” I’m inclined to agree with you. As much as Nascent helped me grow, writing the album was damaging. I became reclusive and subservient to my own shame; a lot of personal relationships suffered as a result. This compelled me to confront several of my own flaws, some of which were a direct outcome of my choice to write the album. Admittedly, I can still struggle with those things to this day. That said, I don’t regret any of it. I’m making progress, albeit slowly. I believe living through writing that album was necessary.

4. Your newest song, “aperture, for meadow” is composed non-traditionally. It’s not on the grid and there’s no tying melody or structure beyond moments in time. Karlheinz Stockhausen experimented with moment form, as did the New York School in the 50s. Do you draw on or relate to this lineage of composers, or is this something you discovered in parallel?

Love Stockhausen. I can see many overlapping ideas between moment form and my approach to writing electronic music, but I believe there are important differences—especially in the use of narrative, which I'll delve into later. While subtle, "aperture, for meadow" does have an overarching structure, with many motivic elements that develop and help tie the piece together.

I’ve always appreciated the enduring lineage of composers exploring electronic music. 20th & 21st century western art music has inspired me for some time and continues to do so. In the past couple years, I’ve become increasingly interested in acousmatic music, a subset of electroacoustic music. Composers working within this practice emphasize the perception of sound, traditionally separating the listening experience from the visual, physical, or causal context of the sound's origin, though this stipulation has evolved over time. The acousmatic approach makes me feel seen in a world that tends to weight performance (and a flawed notion of musical “authenticity”) over the musical material itself. Unsurprisingly, the best acousmatic works have some of the freshest sound design I’ve ever heard, and some of these pieces were written decades ago.

I believe electroacoustic music in general offers unmatched freedom. As acousmatic composer Daniel Teruggi explains in his 2021 lecture, Can Sounds be Considered Objects?

What are the characteristics of electroacoustic music? [...] Any kind of musical work where sound is produced by technological devices. Composers invent the sound of their music. [...] It's probably the largest practicing musical community, growing from techno to contemporary music. Technology covers all the fields of music today. The musical information is merged with the sound.

I find this interpretation especially valuable as someone who struggles to succinctly describe their sound or identify with any one genre.

5. Why has moment form become your go-to way of writing music?

Once again, I can’t fully endorse this claim. What I can say is that I love to utilize “gesture” as a compositional unit (perhaps analogous to Stockhausen’s “moment”). In this mode of thinking, other more well-defined parameters like rhythm, pitch, timbre, envelope, etc. are all intertwined. Sometimes when constructing a gesture, these parameters are merely emergent rather than expressly considered. Creating a dynamic foreground of gestures is exciting to me—the sound design is really able to shine. As mentioned earlier, in contrast to moment form, I actively try to create a narrative. I consider my most successful pieces the ones that do this best. I think that’s what helps people, myself included, connect with my music. Without a narrative, I’d probably need a program note to explain my work. And why do that when I have the music itself? To be clear, I adore much of the technically-oriented music that may lack a narrative or could be described as having moment form. My music however? I want more than just moments.

6. Yuki’s “rut” was sampled in “aperture, for meadow.” How has their music influenced your own?

Yuki Kaneko’s high-end detail is incredible—there are entire compositions hidden above 10 kHz! He’s able to synthesize remarkably physical textures reminiscent of glass and water and carefully place them atop of a bed of lush guitars. What I love most is how these sounds come together to create such an intimate environment; you really feel like you’re sitting in his apartment when listening to tracks like “room,” “cu,” or “sii.” I tried my best to explore these ideas in my own way on “aperture, for meadow.”

8. The harmonizer has been a staple in your production, drawing comparisons to Bon Iver and Imogen Heap. What about that tool do you find so compelling?

It is the most direct way to access or heighten my emotional state when writing. Your voice is you, and the harmonizer magnifies this ten-fold. Every time I let someone use it, this magnification immediately overtakes them. You can see them opening up in real-time, completely losing themselves to what they’re creating as they sing. The vulnerability, the viscerality—it can’t help but pour out. It’s transcendent.

9. Your Max/MSP devices, Color Transfer, have made quite a splash in the music production community. Were you surprised at the reception?

Yes, absolutely. I knew there would be some interest, but after seeing the reaction to the first demonstration I posted of the Timbre Resynth, I was shocked. Many musicians I look up to were openly displaying their excitement.

10. Were the Color Transfer devices packaged patches you already had been using, or were they developed from the ground up?

I’ve been fascinated by the technical concepts that gave rise to Color Transfer for ages. I finally started exploring them seriously while writing Nascent. All the devices emerged during that writing process, but I initially had no intent to distribute them. It was only in the beginning of 2023 that I decided to turn them into a real product. It was quite the challenge but a very rewarding experience no less.

11. I’ve been reading a book, Code Musicology, which claims that code is culture- the decisions we make when deciding parameters, ranges, and algorithms are all cultural artifacts. What was your decision making process like in designing the devices from an aesthetic and cultural standpoint?

I think it would be accurate to say that the music I’ve written and the music that inspires me had an influence on the development of Color Transfer. If I’m being honest, I just tuned the devices to best suit my own musical practices and aesthetic interests. Beyond its name, there wasn’t much intentional consideration of culture. That said, I’m a novice in this field so maybe these things will become more clear to me as time goes on.

12. Why do you include environmental foley in your music juxtaposed to glitch?

I’ve always been an electronic musician. Glitches are part of my lexicon for self-expression. Field recordings of places I care about and homemade foley are very literal ways to inject pieces of my personal life into my music. “aperture, for meadow” ends with the sound of the wind blowing through my nylon guitar and exciting the strings. I went to the very meadow the song references to make that recording. When you listen to it, I’ve brought you there.