Who am I among these glass towers? (e.p release)

Hello, hope your day is going okay :)

So good news!! For the past month, I've been working on three songs and I'm happy to say that they are finally out. The songs are "Window", "Golden", and "Hole in the sun".

Like a lot of other music projects, this one had no single goal or storyline. However, reading "Trick Mirror" by Jia Tolentino definitely provided some inspiration. All three songs were written during the fall season but "Hole in the Sun" is the only one from this year. "Window" and "Golden" were both from last fall but I didn't have time to complete them so this September was my chance to go back.

What inspired this e.p

Looking back at the lyrics, I might have been subconsciously exploring the theme of belonging.

Cold, urban cities is another theme. There is inequality in the presence of tall urban structures. They make you wonder, who are all these buildings for? Rather than seeing large urban structures as a product of productivity and efficiency, they are also product of the patriarchy, and cheap labour. If these things that mark human progress can exist amidst all this inequality, who is it really built for?

As mentioned earlier, two of the songs were from last fall so the story behind them are starting to fade in my mind. But I remember feeling this. Last year, I started to miss my time in Sackville, NB. The town of Sackville has a population of about 5,000 people and only one main intersection. Toronto on the other hand has millions of people and hundreds of intersections. Moving back to the city was a culture shock and I struggled to find my place within it. Nothing felt close to home anymore. There were so many people, each living their own lives, in their own part of the city. Where could I fit in? Who was I amongst these glass towers?

Current thoughts on songwriting + editing

Arguably, one of the best parts of a music project is the songwriting part. If I could just write songs and never produce them, that would be perfect. Songwriting can get you into this deep flow state and the world around you disappears. In that moment, it's just you and the bud of the song. You're trying your very best to have the bud grow as organically as possible. You can't force it to grow because if you do, you just lose it and pull the whole plant out by its roots. You want to just listen to your gut and find a sound that evokes a strong feeling in you. If you really like the song you've written, you might then choose to produce it (record/edit). For me, this part isn't as enjoyable. But if you know how to make the layering and editing process something creative/experimental, then it makes it a bit less tough. For this e.p, I wanted to try "enjoy" the production process a bit more. The strategy I took was to not rush the process. I was very inefficient with editing but at the end of the day, being inefficient was more enjoyable process-wise. It wasn't about sprinting and instead, taking a long stroll.