My first “official” music release

The following is a complete rewrite of a post from last week. The first sentence and another 2-3 sentences are all that remains from the original. This time I wanted to introduced my new EP to IRL friends and people who know my music already.
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I hit the ground running as soon as 2025 began.

After midnight I found myself in a trance.

I ended up battling with colors and textures in a unconscious ritual of rebirth.

I had promised a few old songs that I would package them together as a “first official release” sometime before 2024 ended. As the date approached, I tensed up again, not emotionally distressed, just less able to distinguish inspiration and motivation.

What is a true desire based on excitment and open to possibilities, and what is something wanted merely because it puts my nerves at ease and lets me escape suffering? What is motivated by love and what is motivated by fear?

This is always the most important question.

Part of me still wants to rebel against the idea of anything that could be considered “official” or anything that could be considered a product. When everything is digital and we can do it all ourselves, what even is an “official release”? A CD? Uploading to popular platforms? Something I register or something I call “official”? Something I can sell?

I don’t really see the point in worrying about any of this, but if everything is as it should be, I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable with the idea of an “official release”, I could just ignore it or do what I want without any second thought.

Words and framing are funny things. As soon as we attach meaning to a feeling or phenomena we become vulnerable to disconnection with what it truly is.

The more I think about the word “album release”, the more I realize nothing in this world is coincidence.

“Release”.

RELEASE!

In English this word contains multiple meanings. One is to liberate, to free something.

I was too stuck on the concept of “official” and not focused enough on the idea of release, and I was stuck on the fact that I’ve been stuck on this for over 10 years. There is a certain level of control that I have not been willing to let go of.

I had an idea about what I wanted to sound like and what I should be capable of. I knew I could get there but I knew I wasn’t there yet. And so I waited to release anything, literally and figuratively, hardly realizing it. I’ve become more balanced in other areas of my life so I couldn’t even see that my creative process had always been constrained.

Hope and desire are tools to carve the future, but they can’t do that if they prevent us from enjoying the present.

My truest desire is not to rebel, it’s to be free and to flow naturally. A wall only needs to be knocked down when it’s preventing you from getting somewhere. So then the question becomes “Is rebelling against the idea of an ‘official release’ serving me?”

No.

It’s only made it harder and harder to flow. Extra baggage has been weighing me down.

A large chunk of my creative life force has been stuck and I’ve got to release it.

I need a release.

I was most stuck on the packaging. An “Official Release” should look “Official” right? At least it should express something through it’s presentation. Urgh. I continued to put it off until New Year’s Eve when I had a revelation.

“Fuck worrying about what it looks like, have some fun exploring visual designs that might fit the music and the result will be the cover.”

Art in the flow looks like this. And so I stopped worrying about how it would be percieved and just tried to discover mysef as a visual artist, for the first time really.

And after 7 hours I felt I had come into contact with a whole new side of myself. For the first time in my life I entered the flow state working on something purely visual.

I realized that this is exaclty what I want to share, unfiltered flow state. I can edit and re-edit, but only from the heart, no need to overthink anything, no need to get stuck on how people will take it. Just flow.

And if I love it, I will share it. And if I don’t, I’ll keep it as an idea until I do. But no more waiting until it becomes something that I think it should be.

I’m finally coming to a place emotionally where I can remove myself from the equation. I can create something without the silly idea that I am an artist or the silly imposter syndrome that comes with such an idea, and instead I can just serve the art, and by “art”, I simply means whatever comes through me when I tune to a frequency of brutal honesty.

This is the battle, the meaning of Art vs. Artist, which I am still discovering as I move through time and new truths are illuminated. This is my healing process, my integration, my initiation into deeper and deeper levels of understanding this reflection that is life.

From now on I want to do whatever the art asks me to do. I don’t need any advice on whether it’s good enough or not. If someone can help me to refine my technique, that’s another story, but as for what deserves to be shared I’ll start leaving that entirely up to my own judgment and the voice of the work itself.

“Sun Shone Blue” will be 22 minutes and 5 tracks with a bonus 1 minute track if purchased on Bandcamp. I chose the best recordings I had from the 2019 demos I made and never really “released” although I casually shared them here and there.

Another EP of re-recorded songs from those 2019 sessions will be released later this year as I start to work on new songs.

Here is the cover and track listing: