Everything Comes Along

Music

I’m never sure what to say about Everything Comes Along, which was released in 2012. As the second full-length Ramp album, released after a two-EP endeavour, you would expect cohesion to be the theme. Instead, it’s a release that I see in facets.

The writing of Everything Comes Along overlapped the section of my life where I began to have to seriously deal with mental illness. It’s not an explicit theme of the album at all, but I can hear the oscillation of good and bad days in the tracks, and I know that some were struggles, and some felt like triumphs. It was a difficult album, but I think a rewarding one.

Some of my favourite individual tracks come from Everything Comes Along. Feel free to guess which ones.

You can download the full album here.

Fountains

Music

“Fountains,” was the second of a pair of sister EPs, comprised of Orchard Days and Fountains, intended to sit together but released about a year apart (the former in around 2007 and the latter in around 2008).

Fountains is probably my favourite consolidated release, and I believe that it’s representative of a mature Ramp. It also marks the release where I think I began to challenge myself to be less afraid of putting myself out there, but it’s still a young release with some early foibles. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do.

You can download the full album here.

Orchard Days

Music

“Orchard Days,” was released in 2007, two years after collecting Peristalsis into an album in 2005. Although it was also released on a track-by-track basis over that time, it was the first thing composed with the intent of eventually collecting it into a consolidated release — two pairs of sister EPs, named Orchard Days, and Fountains.

I think the pair, Orchard Days and Fountains, mark the coming-of-age of Ramp. While there are still some rough edges, I’m very proud of a lot of the material on these releases, and I think they speak to who I am as a composer. Orchard Days falls into a structural and textural space that I would like to continue to explore.

You can download the full album here.

Peristalsis

Music

Peristalsis was the first full-length Ramp release. The tracks were released individually between about 2003 and about 2005. While it’s rough around the edges, I have a lot of love for some of these pieces, and I’m often surprised at how well many of them still play.

Track 3, “To the Sun,” features a reading by local Torontonian Lucas Chaos.

Track 8, “Star,” was featured as outro music in the Monkeyman Productions podcast, “Moonbase Theta Out.”

Download the full album here.

Origin Stories

Music

“Origin Stories,” is a small EP of connective tissue, mostly included here for historical reasons. It bridges the gap between old Ramp music, which consisted of very rough, early fooling around by a collective of people beginning around 1990 and petering out as unfinished solo work around 1993, and the modern incarnation of Ramp, which launched with the release of Peristalsis in around 2003.

Download the full album here.

ZOMG WHAT?!

News

*tap, tap*

Is this machine recording?

Oh hey, hi! See that last post, dated half a year ago, saying that I was going to be reposting all the media shortly after having wiped the site due to possible security breaches? Guess who never actually did that?

Well, if it wasn’t me, this would be a super strange narrative.

My goal is to begin doing that today. That might involve figuring out exactly how I want to do that. If that doesn’t take a long time, I should be done in somewhat short order. If it does take a long time, then it takes a long time. I hope, however, that it won’t.

See you on the flip side! The dark side? The other side? Something like that.

The ballad of the broken egg

News

Well, it turns out that this long-neglected site has been compromised a few times of late. Efforts were made to contain it at the time, but not to really repair the site. Finally, I decided that the best thing was to simply wipe the slate and start over. I’m re-uploading media and will put together new pages for the albums and songs soon. In the meantime, hang tight!