Hello! You have reached my portfolio. I am a songwriter and independent recording artist. I get involved in as many projects as I can find. Currently I am writing the music for a friend's concept album, writing a second EP with the Charles Mingus Boy's Band, mastering my solo album and recording demos for my second. Last year, I recorded my first album, an EP with En Bateau, a collaborative single with Taylor Kerns, an EP with the Charles Mingus Boy's Band, and the soundtrack to a short animation. I love immersing myself in the creation of music, and I look forward to producing sound for film and other media.

Here are some examples of my work in the following categories:
Music, Art, Writing, Web Design.
For more information, please view my Resume.

MUSIC

This was Kira's final project for Animation 1 at SAIC. At 700 frames, it was an ambitious project for her, exceeding the class requirements. As a result, animation work was behind schedule and I recorded the music on the night before the due date. For a rush job, I am reasonably happy with the outcome.

This album features a variety of styles from singer-songwriter style arrangements of guitar and strings to drones and electronic beats. The main theme of this album is of mystery and subjectivity. Arrival, the first track, begins with piano arpeggiations and cymbals-- groups of three sixteenth notes on the "and" of each strong beat. There is no downbeat until the drums come in after the first verse. The intention is to disorient the listener into thinking that the upbeat is the beat and then abruptly correct them at a later time. In other songs I use complex chords that are introduced as simpler chords- for instance, a major third is presented which turns out later to be two suspensions over a 13 chord. Accordingly, most of the lyrics are ambiguous and impressionistic, descriptions of personal experiences and philosophies designed to leave room for interpretation.

Compared with my solo album, Hellsongs is less cerebral and more visceral. Each song is an aspect of our interpretation of hell as a state of mind. Most of the songs were rapidly formed from our experimentation with convolution reverb and audio to midi conversion. Field recordings, a contribution from Dylan Dahl, and samples from the Conet Project were added later.

A character study of the artist/rock star as an anal expulsive, who ingests objective reality (and its consequent psychotrauma) and defecates subjective art.
The front cover is a digital photo of the protagonist, Jesse Knowles. Her irreproachable, Dylanesque pose hides behind sunglasses, earbuds and over-exposure. Unbeknown to her, the scene is set to expose her facial features through a dark reflection. However, her Jungian Shadow is only making a duck-face, suggesting vanity as the artist's fundamental motive.
The content of the album exaggerates stereotypes of the recording industry. A Leonard Cohen cover is edited to remove dead space between verses, and processed to remove dynamic range. A cell-phone rings during a quiet section. A sixth-grade composition about cigarettes, absynthe and cleaning one's room (Faded Sweater) is re-hashed and published. The album was recorded at Abbey Road Studios (pictured on back cover). The release webpage (cma.secretcomix.com) features modified excerpts from press reviews of Charles Mingus' Epitaph.
The lyrics describe death, transcendence, toilet humor, assholes, and Jesse's complete sexual history, while referencing Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau, Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye and Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves.
The recording of this album took the accident-prone process from my solo album to the extreme. For several songs, I recorded myself learning the song for the first time. For overdubs on other songs, I afforded myself only one take.

I play guitar and keyboard in The Nobles. I wrote the third song of this EP. Lost To London is a reflection on our collective experiences of love and loss in the high school theater wing, and a farewell to an ambulant theater director. This was my first production.

This is my first collaboration with Taylor Kerns of Boise. The two tracks are a meditation on western religion, specifically the divide between paganism and catholicism. I have always been interested in customs and ideas which cross cultural boundaries, changing in the process, such as language, food, religion, et cetera. The poem I wrote for the first track contains imagery of the darker aspects of nature. In the second track I added to Taylor's melody with field recordings from my travels in France and Germany, including the Notre Dame organ and a Frankfurt street preacher being awkwardly translated.

Lancet Fluke is an ongoing collaboration between Dylan Dahl and me, focused on harsh noise and black metal sounds.

This is my attempt at a more conventional psychedelic rock sound. I am writing the music for Sam's concept album, nineteen tracks following the path of liberation from social facades.

I have been making ambient music for the Open Uru project.

ART

I created the artwork for my solo album with spray paint, coffee, tea, moss and a stove. Drawings by Kira Mardikes.

Drawings by Matt Roberts. I directed the booklet layout and the design of the discs.

WRITING

This comic is an attempt to define the soul of Portland, traveling through its past, present and future.

Spray On is a horror mystery about teenage angst, cactus collectors and animal transformation. My first comic.

WEB DESIGN

I am collaborating on this design job with Kira Mardikes. She provides the visual design and I implement the code. We've re-purposed Mujtaba Ahmed's Silver Dreams Wordpress theme with a new look, custom CSS3 @font-face rules, jQuery animations and SEO. This is my first exercise in standards-compliant design.

This blog chronicles my search for a job. I used Christian Proell's cp-minimal theme and added some custom features such as embedded google stats and e-mail post fetching.

I am still working on this website. I want it to look as crappy as possible and be easy to use.

This was my first website. I wanted a very minimal design for the required page structure, so I organized it like a book.

Thank you for reading my portfolio! I would love to hear any suggestions you might have to improve it. Good bye!