03. About Abacus

Abacus comprises material was never intended to be recorded. It certainly wasn’t intended to be released. It wasn’t supposed to have a life on its own and it wasn’t supposed to take on a final form. I think most artists praise their latest work as their best. Someone standing on the outside might not have seen the journey that lead up to that moment of creation, but the artist made both conscious and unconscious decisions that lead her or him to that moment in time where the art best represented him or her at that exact moment. Abacus, however, is a different story altogether. 

To me Abacus has come to represent a platform for growth. Amidst masks and social distancing I decided to rid myself of all fears, expectations, and the presumptions that I wasn’t good enough. So Abacus became a project of songs I didn’t truly love, but songs which nevertheless deserved to be useful, to blossom, and to be sung. It was project that allowed me to experiment with everything from instrumentation to lyrical arrangement. The result is something I struggle to categorise, but something I know that I’m proud of. 

The album is about 55-minutes of music. It’s quirky, melodic, bluesy, arranged with total abandon, and guitar-driven for the most part: a musical cocktail of 70s power pop, blues rock, and baroque colored contemporary classical music. It’s a record that doesn’t strive to be defined but rather strives to reflect creative diversity, improvisation, and experimentation. 

I’ve got so many people to thank but I’ll get to that later. Sayonara, mothers!