Excursions, before it was what it is now, was a 30 minute release that I created to, mostly make people know that I still exist. However, I didn’t stop creating until ultimately it became a release that is over 100 minutes in length.

I’ve created this release exclusively only with a 2014 MacBook Pro, which turned out to be a difficult process. Most of the songs use more than 50 individual channels. That’s part due to my creative workflow and part due to me working as fast and as messy as possible. Until recently MacBooks only came with 16 gigs of RAM, which is perfectly fine for most all people, except video editors and people like me. For example, the song Thunderbird, clocking in at 13 minutes, needs around 18 gigs of free RAM to open without a hitch. Shockingly, MacBooks can still open a song like that with 16, because of their weird compression technique. However… it’s also a lucky coin flip on whether the software crashes or not.

Technical problems aside, I’ve posed a few challenges to myself to make creating Excursions interesting.

1. I wanted to create the same piece over and over again in as many different places and mood sets as possible
2. I wanted to use recorded speakers as a means to record room acoustics as much as possible
3. Excursions is supposed to feel like a journey through the messiest parts of New York, yet still feel tranquil and relaxing
To achieve number 3, I’ve decided to bake in the sounds of nature with additional grimy spooky places. Surprisingly, it makes the whole record feel very calm even with the most intense songs.


Track 1 was originally created for a prototype of a game concept
Track 4 is a collaboration with Kuabee