Bring in the Lampstand and Light Its Lamps is available November 19, 2022, on all digital music sites.

Audiobulb Records

One-sheet

Bring in the Lampstand and Light Its Lamps

This album is the sound of my household. Guitar, violin, cello, piano, mbiras of my (and my childrens’) construction, melodica, toy pianos and toy guitars, sounds of our lives, my children and their music lessons, deconstructed and recontextualized. This is atmospheric electroacoustic music equally indebted to Jan Jelinek, the Books, contemporary ambient and Matmos, and will be enjoyed by fans of Huerco S, Sam Gendel, and Four Tet. The album is sonically rich, and equal parts sculpted and improvisational. This is music that rewards close listening.

Most of the music I have created, under the name Build Buildings, looks inward, responding to its own internal logic. In this project I look outward, writing music that reflects where I live, in a city apartment, one of a pair of parents raising our children and passing down a life of music to them. I conceived of this project and began recording before the pandemic lockdowns in New York City, but it continued during the weeks and then months at home, during which time my youngest child was born. This is an album about family, and our family was never more concentrated than during this time.

I began with field recordings of our home and of the music in our home. In contrast to sound-isolated studio recordings, the instruments were recorded in context, with the background sounds of our life present. The purpose was to record how the act of playing music exists in the intimacy of our home.

As the project continued, I thought about the creation of home, which is defined not by physical things, but by the actions and relations within. I thought about the biblical artisan Betzalel, tasked with crafting the Mishkan, the desert tabernacle, an impermanent space to house the divine. (The album’s title is a reference.) The beauty and the craftsmanship are crucial to the establishment of the space, but it is the space itself—the home—that is holy.