dXI

Submerged

dXI

Submerged is intended to depict a journey deep into the sea and back. The nine tracks are arranged symmetrically corresponding to the 5 layers of the ocean. Over the course of the album the tone evolves from dark to hopeful. For many years now, I’ve been thinking about sinking into the ocean as a metaphor for a certain kind of emotional journey, the kind with profound experiences that leave you feeling things you can't explain to other people. You find yourself isolated, not due to a barrier you’ve put around yourself but a deep ocean others would need to swim through to understand you. A few years ago, at a small rave one night, a particular track was playing with some industrial sounds. Another attendee was wearing a sailor hat. Together, the atmosphere felt like we were the crew of a sinking boat. Locked into the music, we were trapped, unable to repair the ship. This night tied together my feelings of sinking into the context of electronic music, ultimately inspiring the arc of the album. Coming from a classical and jazz background, I wanted to find more comfort in the repetitive nature of electronic music (which I have been a fan of for quite a while now). I limited my production to entirely synthetic sound sources (no samples, recordings, etc) and no dedicated drum channel. While repetition was a central goal, I produced each track so that the music is never stagnant. I wanted the primary force of musical development to come from evolving the timbre rather than through harmonic or rhythmic progression.