I generally don’t enjoy shameless self-promotion so I’ll try to keep this brief. I’ve got two new projects that I’m excited to share!
The first one is that this blog, and I guess nowadays every page is a “community” so I should say this community, now has an Instagram account. The name of the account of course is Swamp_Things. Instagram makes me put a little _ in between Swamp and Things and so if you’re looking for the account, you should do the same in your search. OR you can just click on the numerous times I’ve just hyperlinked the IG account here. The account is a space where I’ll share my favorite photos I’ve taken around Gainesville and maybe some other parts of the world too. I’m trying to keep it straightforward so the focus is on the photos so for now at least, the plan is to just caption each photo with a date and some info about the device that helped me capture the image. Gainesville is a place that changes a lot so I’m hoping that the Swamp Things IG account can be a place where people can see little snapshots in time. My goal is to update it regularly, much more so than I do with this blog.
The other thing I did recently was put out some music! I haven’t done that in almost 5 years. I went back through some ideas I had recorded a while back with some fresh ears. I found that I liked a lot of it enough to keep pushing on it. I added a few parts and mixed the parts a bit further. And then I did the hardest thing a tinkerer and a musician can do: I let go. Being able to record music, even rudimentarily, on your computer is so fantastic and yet because it’s so easy, it makes it very difficult to stop tinkering and just be done with it. I had this idea in my head that recorded music has to be a certain way, even though I listen to a ton of music that is very lo-fi. At some point, I realized that I shouldn’t care this much. If I like something, and I do like this music, even if it’s rough, even if the timing could be cleaner in spots, maybe it’s just fine to put it out. Maybe it hits with someone. Maybe not. But I won’t know unless I let go. So this is me letting go and seeing what happens.
For now, the EP is only on Bandcamp. I might change that at some point. I’m a bit disillusioned with streaming platforms and the people who run them, but they are also the main game in music right now. The barrier to entry with Bandcamp was basically zero. You can’t beat zero. This does mean that for now, this music is not on Spotify or Apple Music or YouTube. It’s not on Instagram to use for a Reel or a Story and it’s not on TikTok or any other spot. It’s not even on Tidal. Just Bandcamp. You can listen there. If you like it enough, you can buy it: $1 per song or $3 for the four song EP.