I was interviewed by Sam (@ethicalrevolution@climatejustice.social) about my new album offbeat over on #NHAM.

Read the interview →

As I wrote on Mastodon in what turned out to be an interminable chronicle of the making of offbeat :

I’ve never released an album. I write and publish individual songs that progressively outline and become part of albums, sometimes jumping around from one album to the next.

But collaborating on projects on the fedi has taught me something I usually lack : patience. Weeks or months often go by between the moment I finish a song and its release.

Which has probably put me in the necessary headspace to think of a whole album before I’ve actually finished any of the songs.

The idea for the album came from the song I wrote for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave: Autumn Waves album back in October 2025. I usually write silly songs, or topical songs about ideas or issues, political or otherwise, and have released rather few personal, inward-looking songs in all my decades of making music. But Downfall was my first, serious, earnest #bonkwave track, which is what got the ball rolling, and so after some hesitation and prodding from early listeners, I included (a remastered version of) Downfall on offbeat.

I’m definitely stepping out of my comfort zone with this album, as all the songs are about me, or say a lot about me in a less roundabout way than usual, and not always in a very flattering light. But hopefully, they will still appeal and speak to people who don’t have my particular brand of oddballness (I just realized I could have called the album oddball instead of offbeat, but I’ll stick to the more musical option...).

And hopefully, it will be an interesting ride for regular folks too.

Musically, the album is quite varied (no two songs are in the same key, and meters vary from three to four to five to six or maybe even 12), even though the songs always somehow end up sounding like my slightly oddball, offbeat pop songs. Probably because I never worry about making them sound like proper pop songs that follow proper pop song conventions. I let the words dictate the melodies, which dictate the harmonic and song structures, and the arrangements are then dictated by a mixture of personal taste, available tools and instruments, degree of (im)patience, number of spoons, musical chops and lack thereof and of course, serendipity. The result is what it is, for better or for worse, although hopefully the former.

In other words, I hope you enjoy the album, which you can listen to and/or download in the usual places:

• My shiny new hand-crafted music site.
• My Faircamp site
• Mirlo
• Bandwagon.fm
• Oh, and as an experiment, I also created a dedicated javascript-free page for the album.

I would like to thank Emma and Sam (@ethicalrevolution@climatejustice.social) and a lot of lovely people on the fediverse for their encouragement and support.

Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank Ordos Mk.0 (@ordosmarkzero@ravenation.club) for expertly and enthusiastically mastering the album.