Here is my fourth album, a plunge into glitchy electronic jazz rock towards a dark, pulsing core.

Life is full of beauty and joy, but also misery and confusion, and it's a demanding balancing act to accept everything in moderation, especially when all it takes is one bad day or lapse in judgement to veer into the void. Sometimes life can feel like trudging through fields of existential sludge, or plunging into murky depths looking for something more, surrounded by darkness and pressure.

Music is a valuable light for me in that darkness, and each song in this album is an existential expedition into a dark corner, aiming to forge a rhythm through hazardous, shifting soundscapes that hang in the orbit of the abyss. It's inspired by difficult journeys in my life which I feel thankful and lucky to have survived, and by friends who have had their journeys cut short due to suicide, overdoses, and other reasons.

Influences for the album include Leucocyte by Esbjorn Svensson Trio, Insurgentes by Steven Wilson, and some music by Gorillaz, Radiohead, and other musicians willing to venture into deep, weird, and dark places.

I'm a generally happy person these days, insofar as one can be happy in a global society crippled by extreme suffering and dysfunction. I've learned to generate sustainable happiness for myself, and I've adopted a generally productive attitude to channel difficult feelings through, but there were a few periods in my life, particularly when I was a teenager, when I really wanted to say "fuck this" and stop playing what I felt to be a stupid game. When I was around 16 years old (I'm 31 now), I tried to overdose on antidepressants, because I felt beyond overstimulated and with no avenue towards peace of mind. There weren't enough pills in the bottle to be sure it would work, but there were enough that it might, and luckily I survived. I remember lying in bed waiting to see what would happen, my conflicting desires duking it out, eventually deciding that existence is such an incredible thing in itself, that even a life full of sorrow is still worth experiencing.

The lyrics in the album are intended to be abstract and open to interpretation, but to some extent they're based on that personal experience. I'm not against suicide in all cases, but we must be cautious not to be hijacked by a rogue self who has lost the big picture. Life is what you make it. I'm grateful for the kind people around me during that time. It's important to be kind to oneself and others, because that's all that will make the world a less miserable place. (Of course, one person's kindness can be another's torture, but that's another conversation)

Listen to the album in sequence for the full experience.