I struggled with writing notes for this album, because it’s such a sprawling endeavor. But here goes nothing. It started as an inside joke with my family that I would record a 50-track album for my 50th birthday (which has already passed). It is now obviously more than 50 tracks, and somehow transformed from a bit of a goof into a work that I’m very proud of. I’ve been writing, recording, and/or performing music for most of my life, and much of Avant Barge puts musical ideas from my head into listenable form better than I’ve been able to accomplish before.

I started recording the songs here in the early part of 2020 when I was trying to stay grounded in relative isolation (and dealing with life in general). Most of the songs were part of what were intended to be independent EPs, but when I thought of the title Avant Barge I decided to join them all together in a sort of musical barge. Also, I thought it would be extremely funny to release what is effectively a box set of new music as a (thoroughly) independent artist. It could be thought of as a collection of twelve 5-song EPs, ten 6-song EPs, eight 7 1/2-song EPs, and so on. Or one sixty-song EP.

I want to mention some of the music artists that were influential to this endeavor, either consciously or subconsciously (I am in close contact with my subconscious): Yellow Magic Orchestra, Kraftwerk, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Laurel Halo, Afrika Bambaataa, Vangelis, Parliament-Funkadelic, Daft Punk, Stereolab, John Carpenter, Daniel Lopatin, Jlin, Tangerine Dream, The Cure, Giorgio Moroder, Arca, A.G. Cook, Cliff Martinez, Open Mike Eagle, Björk, Flying Lotus, Les Baxter, Mike Patton, Mica Levi, Clint Mansell, Juan Atkins, Battles, Frankie Knuckles, Depeche Mode, 80s Chicago house in general, Jonny Greenwood, Massive Attack, Tortoise, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, The Internet, Cliff Martinez, Brian Eno, Jeff Mills, Hose Plate, and probably a host of others I haven’t identified off the top of my head while writing this. Avant Barge is a great smushing together of a wide variety of music I’ve listened to, and even when I’m trying to pay direct homage to a style or genre I often kaleidoscope it unintentionally.

Technical notes: I recorded all this on my 2017 MacBook Pro either in GarageBand 10.3.5 or Logic Pro 10.6.3. It was mixed and mastered in Logic on the same laptop. The vocals in the one song with singing were recorded by singing into the built-in microphone on my laptop (instead of using one of the actual vocal microphones I have in my home studio). I played all the parts on the laptop keyboard instead of my actual keyboard with a MIDI interface. Because it’s difficult to put the big keyboard on a TV tray while I’m watching a movie.