This album is built around the sound of my acoustic guitar DI’d and Mic’d, relatively dry, panned hard left and right, finger picked, with lots of 7th chords. It started by trying to replicate the jazz chords I’d hear in lofi/chillhop records on my guitar, with artists like Potsu, Steve Does Music, Masked Man, and continued to the bossa nova sounds like Laufey, Tom Jobim, João Gilberto, and led me to masters of the guitar like Jimmy Rosenburg, Joe Pass, Ted Greene.

I began writing Layin’ By The Phone 2 years ago in a period of lockdown in Sydney. I’d moved out of the hostel I had been living in and was now in an Airbnb on my own. Kinda nice, kinda lonely. It had it’s own yoga room in that place with a full wall as a mirror and an angled writing desk. I wrote this song and several arrangements for my previous Stardew Valley cover album in that room. The dry DI guitar sound I used on the Stardew and Animal Crossing cover albums flowed into this EP.

I really liked the simple tone that I was getting and I wanted to try a couple more styles around this guitar sound. I wrote Fairy lights based around a guitar lesson by Jens Larsen, and a memory on hanging lights in room with a friend. This features AJ Arnett on percussion, who contributes clicks, clacks, and drums. I brought this one to my vocal teacher Dean Nash, who helped me polish the vocals.

Nightswim is a prog bossa nova about puppies going on a swim. They swim out past the horizon to find God and ask what the meaning of life is. I went to the beach to write another song that I ended up not liking all that much, but some puppies frolicking along the shore caught my eye and planted the seeds for this song. This features Kristen my sister playing a mouth horn solo in 7/4.

Decadence is a song I started writing in the bath tub. I was chilling in the tub after a long hike, and was thinking about the luxury of being able to spend time in nature, contrasting with the luxury of being in a hot (unnatural) bath. I used a writing technique from Jeff Tweedy’s book “How to Write One Song” called a “Word Ladder” which helped guide the lyrics, and was aiming for Queen’s underrated disco/yacht track “Cool Cat” for the vocals.

Cooper's Song is about a dog we rescued and then had to give back up because it wasn't working out with the other dog in the house. I like that guy.

Innumerable other influences and inspirations:

Podcasts: Ghost Notes, Strong Songs
Youtube: Rick Beato, Nahre Sol, Jens Larsen, Devin Townsend’s Production collab with Waves, Adam Neely, Mic the Snare, Sam Griffin, 12tone

Music Artists: Potsu, Steve Does Music, Masked Man, TommpaBeats, Jinsang, [bsd.u], eery, Idealism, The Deli
Laufey, Tom Jobim, João Gilberto, Stan Getz,
Jerry Martin, Marc Russo, Kirk R. Casey, and Dix Bruce on The Sims 1 OST.
Kazumi Totaka on the Animal Crossing soundtracks
Ted Greene, Joe Pass, Jimmy Rosenburg, Julian Lage,
Queen, The Beatles,

Music Teachers: Dean Nash

This album was recorded on Gadigal Land. The photo was shot in the Karloo Pools.