Statement on the release of music by PTERODACTYLS, White Buffalo, and Graveyard School
Now available for the first time on Bandcamp are three EPs I recorded long ago: PTERODACTYLS (2008), White Buffalo (2011), and Graveyard School (2018).
A little about each album:
Graveyard School’s “Mope Rock Manifesto” (2018) is not necessarily only an album. It’s a philosophical statement, a sonic encapsulation of a worldview that was within me at the time of recording. It was a summary and conclusion of an attitude towards the world that I decided has ceased to be productive for me. Namely, a fashionable hopelessness, an angst, a certain kind of chic despair. I call it that because I have learned it is impossible to be a nihilist all the time. When I realized my philosophical practice needed to be something I could turn on and off, since, after all, it’s difficult to be a misanthrope and yet work in customer service or in education or be a parent, I decided to conclude moping around and feeling tragic, though I still considered it a valid practice. After the election of DJT, and on the verge of graduating college, I realized you need to have some hope and goodwill, even if, ironically, those industries (education, the job hunt) wither it down. It was a decision I was arriving at towards the conclusion of my college career, and the demand to enter the workforce and job hunt community, and the looming birth of my first son.
I had taken a long break from music, beginning in fall 2011 and the conclusion of the White Buffalo EP, and my relocation to Los Angeles and the beginning of my undergraduate work; and Graveyard School is my return to music after a 5-year break from songwriting, where instead I focused on poetry, fiction, and academic essays. As a result, the GYS music and lyrics are infused with more mature subject matter and themes than previous releases. Therefore, I see the album as my graduate thesis on existentialism and postmodernity in the face of Donald Trump’s program of hate. The deconstructionist attitude I harbored all throughout college, shifted into hope and a need for structure with the birth of my son, who makes an appearance on the album. With this event in mind, I realized having to change diapers or grab a wink of sleep whenever you could made it impossible to mope around at a loathsome hole in the wall somewhere in Hollywood and stay out all night, or romanticize suicide, or wear all black every day as an aesthetic and ideological attitude.
Writing for “The Mope Rock Manifesto” began in spring 2016, where I wrote “The Decline,” which ended up becoming a Something Vague song (coming soon), first, and then proceeded to write a new song every day that week. This flurry of inspiration resulted in “My Chorus Crush,” “Imp of the Perverse,” “Smoking in the Rain,” “Give Tomorrow a Chance,” and “Prince is a Gemini.” I sat with these songs in various forms of completion until July 2017, when I formed a band to perform some shows in Los Angeles and the Coachella Valley. In late November, early December, Graveyard School recorded a demo, and my baby was born, and I graduated college all within the same week. These events are all connected, and the GYS EP speaks to all those events.
With a new lineup in tow, we began recording The Mope Rock Manifesto in April 2018, and I ended up leaving Los Angeles, and the band broke up throughout the process, which culminated in October 2018, and the album was released the same day as my son’s one-year birthday in December 2018.
I consider The Mope Rock Manifesto as the culmination of my Sturm und Drang period, and I am desperately trying to finish the trilogy, so I can put a nail on that coffin for good, knowing full well that GYS may never return or play shows again.
However, recording and release of Volumes II and III of the Graveyard School trilogy stalled as a result of the band’s breakup and me shifting my focus to Something Vague.
With SV, I have recently finished writing two EPs titled “Fantasy Pieces” and “Year of the Rat,” the latter takes the themes in GYS and responds in a different way. Instead of despair and hopelessness, the theme on “Year of the Rat” is retribution, rage, and aggression.
I see the PTERODACTYLS (yes, it’s written in all caps) EP “The State of CA. vs. PTERODACTYLS” (2008) as a prologue for GYS’s “The Mope Rock Manifesto” (2018). Somewhere in between, both stylistically and chronologically, lies the White Buffalo EP (2011), a release on which I don’t sing on but play guitar and wrote all the songs for. I consider the 2011 White Buffalo EP as the commencement (which ironically was released the same month as my College of the Desert commencement) of my sturm und drang period. It is a miserable, melancholic, and dramatic set of songs, and I consider it my farewell to the Coachella Valley, as I released the EP and moved away one month later. That was ten years ago, and I have not been in the Coachella Valley (where I was born and raised) for more than a week at a time, a fact that sometimes is hard to believe because 10 years ago all I wanted to do was move away, and now I find the place somewhat tolerable and hard to leave whenever I visit.
Having concluded releasing old music (PTERODACTYLS, White Buffalo, and Graveyard School), my focus is now on the upcoming Something Vague LP which will be released as two separate EPs, “Year of the Rat” and “Fantasy Pieces,” which look back and tip their hat to all the releases that came before but also looks forward to a new sound, a more aggressive, psychedelic, and visceral attitude. Thank you all for your support.
Tentative “Year of the Rat” tracklist:
1. Diesel Eyes
2. Fertile for Dictatorial Regimes
3. A Solid Phalanx of Opposition
4. Descent into the Maelstrom
5. Mr. Turbopump
6. Proletariat Power-up Kit
Tentative “Fantasy Pieces” tracklist:
1. New Technology
2. The Decline
3. Glasgow
4. El Regalo
5. Amsterdamage (2021)
6. Disco Fashionista (2021)
7. John Keats
Music links:
PTERODACTYLS on Bandcamp
White Buffalo on Bandcamp
Graveyard School on Bandcamp
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