modern composition · guitar
One guitar, and as little else as I can get away with.
“Monolith Serenade” started the way these do — the sound of expat life when no one is listening, at an odd hour.
I kept the takes that sounded like weather and cut the rest.
If it slowed you down for forty minutes, it did its job.
People hear modern composition and expect calm; underneath it, for me, it's mostly displacement.
The guitar found the shape before I did; I stayed out of the way.
If it slowed you down for forty minutes, it did its job.
The first sketch for “Expats Living” was almost nothing: the sound of expat life when no one is listening, held too long.
I kept the takes that sounded like weather and cut the rest.
It isn't a message — it's company for a particular hour.
I make music about expat life and stillness, and I mean every note — but I won't pretend it's free.
Choosing quiet can look, from outside, like disappearing. Some days the calm I write about is the calm I most need myself.
If you make gentle music and feel overlooked, you are not doing it wrong. That is just the shape of it.
The first sketch for “Thoughts” was almost nothing: a long look at in-between places, held too long.
The guitar does the thinking here; I only choose what to keep.
It isn't a message — it's company for a particular hour.
In the lineage of William Ackerman · the Windham Hill school · nylon-string folk · Durutti Column
Plays now and then, small rooms only, mostly around the UK — a hall, a back room, sometimes someone's front room. Nothing big. If you'd like to host one, get in touch.
A guitar is portable, and so is a life lived between countries.
I write modern composition on the guitar. Mostly it's about expat life and displacement — ordinary things, made a little more visible.
There are a handful of records — “Expats Living”, “Monolith Serenade”, “Thoughts” — and they belong together.
