2015 Year In Music

This is the type of post that I have been writing for a few years now, where I present a quick rundown of what I have been listening to in the past year and listing my favorite albums. I'm not going to do that this year. While I have definitely been listening to music all year long, I wouldn't say that I would be qualified to recommend much new music from the past year. Honestly, I was so busy this year that I didn't devote as much time to discovering new music as I have in the past. I also spent a lot more time listening to older music that I admire more than anything being made at the moment.

I started this blog initially to create an archive of my creative output, and to preserve that on the internet. While I don't update very often, I still like using this space to present whatever projects I have been working on. This was a busy year for me as a musician, as well as a producer and engineer. So this year I'm going to present a quick rundown of everything that has been released this year that I had a hand in. This has been my busiest year since moving to New York, and while I'm proud of what I accomplished, I believe this is only the tip of the iceberg and that next year will be better than the past. But maybe that's just me being optimistic. I love being a musician and I've very grateful for the people whom I make music with. Here are the fruits of my labor.


Gold Child, "Tides."




This is a project that is particularly close to my heart. Emily is my girlfriend and she writes beautiful music. We were fortunate enough to put a band together this year and release our first single. I played drums, co-produced, engineered, mixed, and mastered this track.





Inner Outlaws, "Year of the Outlaw."




While the future of IO is uncertain at the moment, this has been a very important year for us. We embarked on a very ambitious project this year of writing and recording a new track each month. And we almost made it! Here are the eight tracks that we made this year. I played drums, co-produced, engineered, mixed, and mastered all of these tracks, except for 'Just Like Moonlight' and 'The Mark,' which were mixed and mastered by Matt Shane.





Ski Lodge, "Trust," "Heaven Is Now," "God Will Never Come For Us."










These three tracks represent a new direction for Ski Lodge and are the result of sessions that were started a long time ago, so I am very glad that they have been released. I helped produce these songs with Andrew, and played drums and various percussion on these tracks, mostly on 'Trust' and 'Heaven Is Now,' where the drums were tracked live to 2 inch tape before being chopped up in Pro Tools.





Surf Rock is Dead, "Never Be the Same."




What started out as an occasional gig has turned full time, with the occasional session. I started playing with these guys in March and haven't stopped since, playing close to thirty shows in NYC this year. While I'm not a major part of the creative process, I did play drums on this track.


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Those are all the tracks that I played on that have been released this year, but I have also been playing with a couple other groups. Go check out Von Sell and Gemma.

Thank you all for listening and here are some shots of me playing drums cause why not?

Inner Outlaws, "Crystal Case"

Here is the most recent Inner Outlaws single.  This particular song was written and recorded under a very tight time constraint, but I believe we delivered a professional product.

New Life, "God Will Never Come For Us"

While Ski Lodge is in a sort of dormant stage, Andrew has decided to release music under the moniker New Life. I helped him produce a few songs, and below you can find the first single.

Inner Outlaws, "Buttons"

And now I present you with the latest IO release.  This song is entitled "Buttons," and it's about the buttons falling off of your clothes, unraveling the thread of life that is holding humanity together, or something to that affect.  I hope you enjoy.

Inner Outlaws, "Boys In Blue"

This year is really flying by, am I right?!  Another month, another brand new IO song.  This one is especially personal because it is about a show we tried to perform at, or really a party, on the the roof of our rehearsal space.  Needless to say, the show was prematurely halted thanks to the NYPD.  But out of that, I present to you "Boys In Blue."  Again, this track was engineered by yours truly.  Looking forward to next month!

Inner Outlaws, "King of Nothing"

Here I present to you the latest installment of the 'Year of the Outlaws,' Inner Outlaws most recent track for the past month.  This song is a straight ahead rocker with a twist at the end, the culmination of a busy month of us working together.  Again this month I recorded and mixed/mastered this track in a timely manner.

Inner Outlaws, "Permababy"

Here we have the most recent Inner Outlaws single.  Titled 'Permababy,' it only slightly has anything to do with babies.  Anyway, I mixed and mastered this song myself, and a lot of time and energy went into making it sound good.  I hope you enjoy.

Miami Beach Art Deco

I recently took a trip to South Florida and spent an afternoon walking around Miami Beach.  These are just a few of the great examples of Art Deco buildings that cover most of Miami.

Inner Outlaws, "Suzanna"

The most recent Inner Outlaws single is now available for your listening pleasure.  This one is a little departure from the previous two, with Ian writing about his aunt with Alzheimer's in a pop rock sense, but it was fun to work on. I mixed and mastered the song myself in a month that was full of time crunches. Please stream below.

Inner Outlaws, "The Mark"

New month, new Inner Outlaws song.  This one is entitled "The Mark."  It was engineered and mixed by yours truly and mastered by Matt Shane.  Enjoy.

Inner Outlaws, "Just Like Moonlight"

This year begins a new journey for my band Inner Outlaws.  We have vowed to self produce, record, and release a new song every month of this year, and below I present to you the first of these offerings.  I personally spent many hours in the studio working on this song, trying to make it sound the best that I possibly could, and I am proud to say that it sounds pretty damn good.






And a big thanks to Matt Shane for mastering the tune.  See you next month.

Ski Lodge "Trust"

I am pleased to announce the release of Ski Lodge's newest single, "Trust."  This is many months in the making, and below you can listen to a song that I played drums on, as well as helped produce.  We are in the process of finishing up an album's worth of new songs that will hopefully be released before summer of this year.  Many of these songs we have been performing live for some time, so we are eager to release them to the world.  Until then, here is the first single.

2014 Year in Music

Normally I would write a post post that recaps the best music that I discovered and listened to this year. However, this past year was not a terribly good year for new music, and I found myself listening to less new music. Or should I say new albums. I still viciously consume music blogs in search of new music so that I can add more songs to my Soundcloud playlists, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing that. I would recommend, however, using Spotify radio, which draws from Spotify's large database of music and normally selects a nice variety of music, new and old.

Anyway, what I'm not saying is that I didn't listen to new albums. So below I have listed the few standouts, for me, of this past year.

Angel Olsen "Burn Your Fire For No Witness" - Beautiful voice, wonderful songwriting. This is truly a great album. My favorite of the year.

Beck "Morning Phase" - This is probably a biased pick because I've been a Beck fan since I was 8 or 9 years old, but this is a very good album. It's delightfully somber and just sounds so good.

Todd Terje "It's Album Time" - Dance music can be fun!

Ariel Pink "Pom Pom" - "Put Your Number In my Phone" is my favorite song of the year, maybe of the past 5 years. This album isn't perfect, but I really like it. It's just weird enough to catch my attention.

And that's pretty much it. I did like The War On Drugs album, but it took a while for me to get into it. The band Tops put out a pretty good record. The Mac DeMarco album was good, and so was the Real Estate record, but they were both very similar to their past albums. Maybe my tastes have narrowed, or maybe I need to take a break from new music, but either way, I'm looking forward to the new year.