Introduction

I began making music in 2001 at age 17. As far as I remember, I received a copy of Sonic Foundry ACID Music 2.0 for Christmas of 2000. I started by crudely sequencing some of the example loops that came on a CD-ROM.

I knew little about music theory, played no instruments, and outside of a couple years of choir in school, had no sort of formal training. It’s quite amazing to me that this compilation starts with a composition I created back in the Spring of 2001 when I was a junior in high school. I can remember cobbling together the samples from a variety of sources - all digital - CD-ROMs and the Internet. There’s even a tiny splice of Nine Inch Nail’s “Hurt” in there.

In the periods I was making a lot of music, 2003 - 2007, I mainly focused on hip hop - producing for Advent (Paul Leblanc), Kurram (Joe Pagano), as well as my own solo work. The compilation of my solo work as Ease August has been available on Spotify for about a decade, as well as the Synergy album with Kurram - but until now, most of my “electronic” work has not been anywhere.

Most of this compilation comes from the Brainmeat album which I released in late 2004. For a while it was a free download (a ZIP of MP3s) on the Basement Troubadour website, but that’s been also offline for decades.

When I moved to Vermont in 2008, I sold off a lot of equipment and my music-making PC ended up in storage. While I worked on a few songs, nothing ever got finished much less released.

I present to you Dusk, the compilation of my work from 2001 - 2007.

Album Cover

This is a photo I shot with a Olympus C-120 (D-380), a 2 megapixel digital camera, likely sometime in 2002. The date/time metadata is not accurate, but my guess is Summer 2002 at dusk in my parents’ backyard in Massachusetts.

Tracks

1. Hello (2001)

I created this mostly in a night in the Spring of 2001 using ACID Music 2.0 and loops/samples all coming from digital sources. I was a junior in high school, 17 years old. I had no other musical instruments or recording equipment, and no record player.

A couple years later, I put together a compilation of all the oldest work Advent and I ever did and submitted it to UndergroundHipHop.com. They called this track a “dope atmospheric intro”, and then proceeded to trash the rest. This makes sense is the rest was very bad - mostly rushed, unhearsed junk recorded with a computer mic.

2. Dreaming Near The Gulf Of Mexico (2004)

From the Brainmeat album. Heavily time stretched drum break loops. Not sure where I pulled the horn sample but it’s nice one.

3. Dreaming Far Above The Gulf Of Mexico (2004)

Brainmeat - definitely sampled the big middle section from a record.

4. Presentense (2004)

5. Timepiece of An Older Relative (2004)

Brainmeat - much of that original album is essentially a collection of different fever dreams - and this one reminds me of being half awake while sleeping in a home with an old clock ticking away.

6. We Meet Again (2006)

One of two songs I finished for a second Brainmeat album. It was up on Myspace and later YouTube for a bit. It is driven by a Herbie Hancock sample and features a spoken word recording of “Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost:

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

7. The Number Zero (2004)

From Brainmeat - contains a shortwave radio recording of a woman speaking in German. My good friend, the late and forever great Nate Labelle used to say it would make his dog go kind of crazy. Nate liked the Brainmeat stuff so I am happy to keep it living on.

8. Musee Des Beaux Arts (2007)

This track is the only one on Ease August “A Dream Deferred” - serving as the outro. It gets it’s name from the 1938 W.H. Auden poem and contains a spoken word recording of it:

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

9. Postense (2004)

Brainmeat - a choir sample time-stretched and reverbed to be as big as possible.

10. Dreaming After All (2004)

This was the last track on the Brainmeat album. Originally it was about a half hour long, of mostly ambient sound. I edited it just mostly the action.