Sonic Flowers 1 // New Music Teaser

⚘⚘A short series about some physical objects I am inspired by ⚘⚘

**If your eyes glaze over when someone starts explaining how something works, there’s a special treat at the bottom of this post-a clip of an unreleased song from the new HH record I keep talking about. Heard nowhere else! :) ⚘⚘

I took a little poll over on my IG page last week, after quite a few people responded to a guitar video I posted- and it seems like some of you are curious about the world of pedals, guitars, and other tools that help music happen for me. I’m no expert on any of these things, and as a general rule to myself I try not to acquire new things unless I think they can help me get closer to expressing something intentional. There are obviously exceptions and happy accidents that are crucial, for me, to discovery. And admittedly it’s a slippery slope! (I’m known to get carried away)

This will be a not too often series about gear, that I’ll try and keep short and not too isolating for the non music makers reading.

---

⚘Sonic Flowering⚘

In this video, I’m playing a guitar that I’ve been waiting a long time for- built by Duncan Price. If you’re a person who is here reading because of my deep love for guitar, you might already know him and the beautiful and unique instruments he builds. The wonderful Fretboard Journal has an amazing interview with him here. My dear friend Blake Mills showed me his Duncan build, and when I tried to play it I was deeply humbled. Blake definitely makes most things guitar look easy, but I know that nothing comes without dedication, curiosity, and commitment. And this guitar is no exception. It took me about 4 hours with it to get the intonation on it almost sounding right enough to share. It’s fretless, and even though there are still fret markers, relying on your eye doesn’t cut it here. I felt similarly to when I was first learning how to play slide, fumbling around and mostly sounding out of tune. But when I started to get the hang of it, I stopped noticing time pass and got lost in the trance of exploration. Some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten about playing guitar that I often forget: play like a voice.

---

Meris Enzo X

Sonic Flower No. 1 germinated by the Meris Enzo X

Recently, and very much thanks to Ed Tullet aka Lowswimmer who I’ve been a big fan of for a while since hearing Hailaker, I was introduced to the lovely people over at Meris. I’ve used their pedals before, mostly the Hedra, which is amazing, and mostly at other people’s studios. I’ve seen Josh Johnson do some wild wild melodic sorcery with it. So when I heard they made a pedal that could take a standard guitar (or any instrument) and trigger synth sounds without installing a special pickup, of course I was extra curious. I’ve been slowly but surely diving deep into the Enzo X, using my G&L tele that my uncle gifted me. Although truthfully they did send me a pedal, I promise this won’t ever be product placement as I was just instantly inspired by this. There are a lot of videos out there showing what it can do, but I’m sharing some music I made with it without overthinking too much. (If you’re a person who pays to get extras here, I’ll post a few more.)

Sonic Flower No. 2 germinated by the Meris Enzo X

**For the sake of simplicity-all of the pieces I’m sharing here in this series will be recorded using only the pedal/instrument I’m talking about, recorded direct into my computer through a Highland Dynamics Delta 4 Mk2. No plugins, no funny business, except for a little limiting to make it listenable on the phone you’re probably reading this on.

29 Pedals

Admittedly I couldn’t take photos of one of my desert island pedals, the EUNA by 29 Pedals, because it lives permanently on my pedal board which is in a dark room in the valley where I’ll be tomorrow for Perfume Genius production rehearsals. We leave Thursday! For tour! Even if I showed you a photo of my board (I will next series) you wouldn’t see it because it’s hidden under other pedals. It’s a mystery that way, even to me. I’m not even entirely sure what it does, which I know is every annoying and not helpful at all. It’s described as an input buffer, words that 5 years ago made my own eyes glaze over and then roll back. Some of you might not believe me when I say it just makes the guitar feel better to play. Touchiness. I don’t even have an sound example because it’s very subtle. If it’s snake oil, I’m a sucker. I love pretty much everything Jesse, who full disclosure I am lucky enough to call my friend, and am lucky enough to have been gifted these pedals, thinks up and sees into production. Whenever something baffles me or breaks and I don’t know why, he’s in the top 3 friends I call. He’s literally a genius and he’s kind and passionate about his philosophy and I love that. He also made the Toki which is a fuzz but also it can just add a little warmth, a little grit. It can get unruly too. It’s also not noisy like a lot of other fuzz pedals out there. It’s becoming an always-on pedal for me, like the EUNA. I like to keep it on, and use my volume knob to control the amount of dirt. Leora, my partner, read a guitar article in the New Yorker last night that I have yet to read, and she just told me while editing this post that in it someone says “Guitars are works of art that help make works of art”. We both feel similarly about pedals. How pretty is the OAMP?

29 Pedals OAMP

The guitar community never ceases to amaze me. As corny as it sounds, I’ve learned so much from people I admire, and more often than not, they’ve been very generous and willing to answer questions or share their own findings. I have a deep respect for sharing, for people who aren’t cagey when it comes to how they do what they do. To me, 90% of the magic is in the person and is impossible to replicate individuality. But the 10% that is tangible can open up huge portals of inspiration, and when people gatekeep approach, it always makes me wonder what they’re afraid of. Being replaced?

This concludes the first of hopefully many chapters of ⚘Sonic Flowers⚘. Thanks for stopping by my audible garden!

---

Wheel of Change

And now as promised, a special treat. It’s kind of like a sonic flower but more like a bouquet that I grew in my own garden. On purpose. And instead of giving you the bouquet, I’m going to give you a single petal of a rose. (No, it’s not a Duke Ellington cover) Special access paid subscribers, I’ll share some more stills from the music video for this song, which is called Wheel of Change, as well as a a few what I’m calling Mutations which were tiny improvisations that grew wonky out of the searching. They’re “flawed” but to me that can be synonymous with human and with nature…

The chorus from a new song, Wheel of Change, from the new album I keep mentioning!

Still from forthcoming music video

I’ve never been great at being a tease, always giving too much away too soon, and in some ways listening to this chorus right now it might be about someone who is a tease? I don’t know. What do you think it’s about? I am so much more interested in hearing about how songs I write land with the listener, in the context of their own lives, rather than explaining what a song is to me personally. I have a mercurial, addictive, and sometimes codependent relationship with songwriting. Most of the time I keep my relationship to it behind a few locked doors in my psyche. Don’t wanna know too much. Putting out music for me can feel like letting someone read my dream journals, can feel like going under hypnosis in front of a crowd.Wheel of Change felt like a jigsaw puzzle that just clicked into place when it came out of me. When I first wrote it, it was much slower and had more of a folky, subdued feeling. I thought it would be almost a sequel to Placeholder, but it morphed into a much more desperate, pleading character production wise. Thanks to King Tuff (my dear friend, old house mate, and rock and roll legend who engineered Fun House) who came into the studio while I was making this new record, and said I needed to stop holding back. He said I needed to rock, the rock was in me, and to not be afraid of it. He was right! We turned it up! Maybe I’ll share the demo of Wheel of Change once the whole song is out for a while.

Thanks for staying curious…