Music + Playlists

At age 12, I received my first electric bass guitar. It was a black Fender Squier knockoff, and I thought it was the most beautiful thing ever. After school, I played the same Iron Maiden and Blink 182 songs over and over again, practicing as much as any teenager would. I was never as good as some of my musically inclined friends --I didn't have an amplifier, which may have contributed to it--- but I wasn't trying to be the best either. In the bass, I found an instrument capable of producing a grounding force that, with just a few precise notes —both melodic and rhythmic— brought music and audience into a shared pattern. And that was magical to me.

I still enjoy sharing music with others to this day, though now I mostly make eclectic playlists. Growing up, Vangelis, Blondie, Don Omar, Phil Collins, Rachmaninoff, Sergio Vargas, and Kraftwerk were all part of the soundscape. Instead of genre puritanism, what mattered in this sonic ecology was that bodies could flow freely at their own pace. Making a playlist is a way to imagine new affective architectures for shared spaces, to weave bodies together through motion and pattern. Such a practice has nothing to do with selecting interesting themes or identifying personal preferences; it's an experiment in bringing together hopes, desires, and memories to shape a common(ing) experience.

In this section, I will share some of my playlists. These lists cover a wide variety of genres, tempos, and moods. Playlists tend to be long (3 - 5 hours) and they do not have an internal order, so I suggest you listen to them on shuffle. If you want to have a more serious engagement with the music, I am also open to playing my sets at your next corporate annual gathering, Friday pizza party, sound art festival, or show opening :) —just send me a note.

• Refrains & intensities

A playlist for moments when you need to go elsewhere so you spin in circles until your core becomes your line of flight. Rhythmic patterns delineating territories in a field of chaos, through repetition and variations in intensity. Expect unexpected textures—sonic, affective, and otherwise.

• Voyage 3,000

• Abstract Space

• Writing