Everyone thinks genius work requires time and effort and a whole lot of luck and innate ability, and it often does, but more than anything, the best thing you could possibly do to create a work of genius is to get out of your own way.
I only dare call myself a genius because I believe we all are geniuses in our own way. We all have unique gifts and stories. We all have a natural flow to us that can never truly be replicated.
I put out my EP "Sun Shone Blue" in 2025, after years of deliberating. I had wanted more than anything to put out something that felt up to my own standards, but without a fully functional computer or money to pay someone to record and mix, I had a choice to make.
Would I wait another year before I could re-record and share these songs as the more mature and powerful versions I knew they could be? Would I keep them to myself forever?
In the end, I realized that the word "release" has multiple meanings. One is to share a piece of work with the world. Another is to let go of something. Another is to give something it's freedom. I don't believe that's a coincidence.
I realized that these songs had been clogging up my system. My skills, my confidence, and my ability to channel had not caught up with my dreams and it was causing a kind of performance anxiety. And so I decided to share something with the world, knowing that likely no one would care.
I needed to release myself from the fear of not being good enough, and so I decided to release something that didn't feel good enough. I decided that I would accept myself for where I was even if it wasn't exactly where I wanted to be, and releasing the best recordings I had up until that point felt like a way for me to honor my story up until that point.
So 5 songs written between 2010 and 2017, and recorded in 2019, were finally released in 2025.
The title track "Sun Shone Blue" was really special to me. Unlike "Art vs. Artist" "Astral Blanket" and "Mirror" which had spent years taking form, and which I had performed live in various version, "Sun Shone Blue" was more of a spur of the moment kind of thing.
I had finally gotten an audio interface and was playing around with the free version of ableton which was included. I wanted to take a stab at an acapella song. I had never intended on sharing this experiment with anyone but as I recorded, I thought "Fuck, I like this!".
After writing songs that had taken years and years, feeling as if everything needed to be crafted meticulously, this was the first time I realized that sometimes something could just flow out naturally without any thought whatsoever and feel just as powerful and meaningful.
That experience has stuck with me since, and informs my process now. I've gotten a lot faster at putting together songs than I used to be and on top of that, I improvise a whole lot more on my songs thanks to this experience.
I named the album and the song "Sun Shone Blue" to describe that feeling when you wake up in the morning and it feels like you are living in a different world from the night before. As time passes, I feel this way more and more often, and I feel others feeling the same way with me, as if we are travelling together.
The Blue Sun is neither a warning, nor a blessing, though it can serve as either. It is simply a sign that things have changed on a level so fundamental that it requires you to question everything.
I had about 10 recordings to choose from and without the means to re-record or mix at the time, all I could do was choose the songs that felt the most whole. I chose 3 proper songs that I had played live before and two experiments, one that was a lot more obviously experimental, called "Mengmengmeng", and "Sun Shone Blue".
For a long time, we never played this song live but after a few shows on electric guitar with a loop pedal, I realized I could create a live version of the song and it's become my favorite songs to perform.
The reason I decided to write about this song today is that I'm nearly finished mixing a new version of the song. It will be the only song on the EP to make a reappearance on the upcoming album. I wasn't originally going to put it on there, but it seemed to be a puzzle piece that fit between two other songs, and so I got to reworking it to sound a bit more like how we've been playing it live recently.
As with the songs I wrote about from the live album, after listening, log into scrobble.life and leave a comment/snap there and I will send some upvotes your way and buy $5 for each person who does to add some buying pressing to Hive. I've already bought $125 USD of Hive from this intiative, I'd love to double it.
Here is a link to the song on Scrobble: https://scrobble.life/music?v=E3wMlHfhmwM
We also put out a new single on streaming called "Speaking Leaves". Check it out on the link below!
