the bonk way is my collaborative contribution to The Four Seasons of Bonk Wave: Autumn Waves 3 Sample Challenge

I didn’t know what to do with this edition’s sample pack. I lack the required chops (I am sample-challenged), and I said as much on Mastodon... That’s when C.Circo (@CCirco@ravenation.club) came to the rescue by suggesting we collaborate on a track, and this is the result. The lyrics are an ode to the ethos of #bonkwave, and an expression of my gratitude towards C.Circo, who embodies that ethos.

It was mastered by Ordos Mk.0 (@ordosmarkzero@ravenation.club)

You can hear it alongside a ton of other great #bonkwave sample-challenge tracks on The Four Seasons of Bonk Wave: Autumn Waves 3

You can also find it on my Faircamp site, which has an exhaustive collection of bonkwave-related materiel.

Finally, the bonk way is available on my shiny new hand-crafted music site.

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.

Downfall was written back in October for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave fall album, which was appropriately released in spring (if you’re in the northern hemisphere like me :)

Downfall also sparked and opens my upcoming album, offbeat. For now, you can hear it alongside a ton of other great #bonkwave tracks on The Four Seasons of Bonk Wave: Autumn Waves 2 (Autumn Waves is actually a triple album!)

You can also find it on my Faircamp site, which has an exhaustive collection of bonkwave-related materiel.

Finally, Downfall is available on my shiny new hand-crafted music site.

And thank you to @ordosmarkzero@ravenation.club for mastering the track!

If you’ll pardon a little music geekery, all these months after having written and recorded the song, I’m still kind of amazed by how moving from D minor to D minor 7 (pretending is phony...) changes the feel of the song. And it’s not just the arrangement or the harmonies. I get the same effect when I’m just strumming an acoustic guitar.

Also, don’t ask me why, but I remember that when I sat down to write the music, my initial idea was to make a song with a lot of silence in it. I mostly failed, but still.

Another banner year, spread across multiple projects, ranging from #bonkwave to #RFFF25 to #NHAM to #TIBtv, to a little solo stuff. I don’t know how long any of this will last, but I’m relishing it while I can. Skip to Design | Community

Music

In more or less chronological order, I think:

• I co-wrote You Are Not Alone with @CCirco@ravenation.club for the Comfy Collaborations #RadioFreeFedi tribute album organized by @futzle@old.mermaid.town
• I released a couple of extra tracks based on You Are Not Alone.
• I released a new song, Cities
• I wrote jingles for NHAM Mixtape Radio and Not What I Call Radio Bonk Wave
• 2 of my bonkwave songs were delightfully remixed
• I released The Rite of Bonk for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave-Bonks of Spring 1 album
• I collaborated on Hi It’s Spring (production) with Sam (@ethicalrevolution@climatejustice.social) for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave Spring album
• I gave a few related songs a common home by releasing the Cities EP (which got a lovely review on NHAM by @babumenos@sunny.garden)
• I performed the sknob bonks cities live livestream for Radio Free Fedi Fest 2025 #RFFF25 (and covered other fedi musicians)
• I contributed some vocals to Happy Bonk Day 2025 as part of a great lineup of BonkWave Allstars herded by @axwax@chaos.social
• I released Ukulele Bonk on the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave-A Midsummer Bonk’s Dream 1 album
• I released Wannawadda on the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave-A Midsummer Bonk’s Dream 2 album, part of the first ever Bonk Wave Sample Challenge
• I produced (and played on) Better Than That by Sam, which was also released on the Bonk Wave summer album (and I also make a guest appearance on the fantastic video Sam made for the track)
• I wrote and recorded a song I’m quite proud of for the upcoming Four Seasons of Bonk Wave fall album (which should come out this winter or next spring, in typical #bonkwave fashion)
• I released a new song, Choo-Choo Train
• I wrote 4 new songs for an upcoming concept album or EP, and have been chronicling my progress on Mastodon. We’ll see how far it goes and how long I can resist the urge to release them...

Design

I used to do quite a bit of UI and web design back in the day, experience which I put to good use this year:

• I designed album covers for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave album series, with real-time feedback from the bonkwave community, and essential contributions from @Traiken@mastodon.social
• I designed web and fedi assets (and the NHAM RFFF25 LiveStream graphics) for NHAM
• And I did the version 1.0 redesign of the NHAM website (CSS mockup, Sam had to actually implement it)
• Which gave me the impetus to finally recode and redesign my antiquated music site from scratch, which I’d been meaning to do for about a decade ; check out the new sknob/music, and read all about the redesign in a series of posts right here
• I made a bunch of hand-drawn NHAM animations for the NHAM program slots on The Indie Beat Television (#TIBtv)
• I made a bunch of more general NHAM promo videos for #TIBtv

Community

On top of the musical collaborations with @CCirco@ravenation.club, the bonkwave community and Sam mentioned above, I participated in the following initiatives to promote music and musicians on the #fediverse:

• I did some virtual leg work vetting artists and asking for their consent to be listed in the Indie Art Support Community (IASC) directory which is built on the shoulders of @radiofreefedi@musician.social (and you can apply by pinging @hello@fedi.indieart.support on fedi)
• I was involved in prepping the launch of the NHAM fedi music discovery site, and I’m also an admin of the site (for which I wrote a few posts too, like The Best Spotify Alternative and Imposter Syndrome)
• I handled the technical plumbing for and co-hosted a NHAM Mixtape livestream for Radio Free Fedi Fest 25 #RFFF25
• Last but certainly not least, I was part of the group of fedi musicians corralled by @limebar@mastodon.social to prep the launch of The Indie Beat Television, a 24x7 “Fedi MTV” (brainstorming, transcoding and tagging a ton of videos, pixel-pushing, and contributing a few musical snippets to station IDs and such). Don’t forget to follow @TIBtv@tv.theindiebeat.fm on the fediverse!

As I said in a mid-year progress report:

I can’t believe how lucky I am to be part of the incredible fedi music community and to have met and collaborated with so many delightful, open-minded, super-creative people, who have opened my eyes and ears in so many ways.

All in all a fine way to keep my head above water in these troubled times, and a constant and much-needed reminder that there is plenty of good, and good people in the world, and that we have agency.

Thank you everyone ❤️

Hi It’s Spring by Kid Sam and sknob was written by 8 year-old Sam (@ethicalrevolution@climatejustice.social), sung by grown-up Sam, and arranged (or produced or whatever the kids call it these days) by me for the latest #bonkwave compilation, The Four Seasons of Bonk Wave: The Bonks of Spring 1. An early listener swears it is destined to be the hit of the summer.

What do you think?

Oh, and ducklings!

The Rite of Bonk, is my programmatic music contribution to the latest #bonkwave compilation, The Four Seasons of Bonk Wave: The Bonks of Spring 1. Some people might call it swirthy, others might think it is #NSFW, while others still might argue that it is in fact #NotBonkwave.

I guess you’ll just have to decide for yourself.

You may remember that I contributed two songs to the last #BonkWave triple album: C’est quoi (le bonkwave) ? and La sieste/Don’t Mind Me.

After the staggered release of Disc A, Disc B and Disc C of Not What I Call Bonk Wave – Volume 003, and as is customary in bonkwave circles, contributors started sharing stems (individual tracks) of their songs, so they could be remixed by other musicians.

I honestly didn’t think anyone would be interested in remixing my songs, and said so on the BonkBoard forum, but members begged to differ.

So I figured out how to generate and share my stems, and to my utter surprise, not one, but two people decided to remix my songs!

And they have now been released, along with many other amazing remixes, on Not Bonk What I Call Wave: Remixes Vol 2!

Go listen to (and download) the whole album now (It’s free!), or listen to it right here:

Reverb 10000 remixed both of my songs, and the results are absolutely delightful! I actually think I like La sieste / Don't Mind Me (Reverb 10000 Chausettes et Chaussons Mix) more than the four versions that I laboriously came up with!

C.Circo (@CCirco@ravenation.club), with whom I previously collaborated on a song for the Comfy Collaborations #RadioFreeFedi tribute album, also remixed C’est quoi (le bonkwave) ? in his incredible and inimitable style, and his track was way up there on the applause-meter during the online release party.

I nearly forgot! Ordos Mk.0 (@ordosmarkzero@ravenation.club) somehow managed to build a mind-boggling Bonkwave Bouillabaisse out of bits of 10 songs, including C’est quoi!

It’s truly wild for a songwriter to be remixed: flattering, surprising, touching, humbling, thrilling and gratifying, and I want to thank both Reverb 10000 and C.Circo from the bottom of my heart for making me feel so... special!

I’ve been writing music and songs for several decades now, and every single time I finish a piece, I wonder if it was the last, if the well has run dry.

Well it sure didn’t happen this year. I can’t believe I put out so much stuff! Let’s see...

New songs

I wrote, recorded and published the following new songs:

• Driven By Desire (radio edit and extended mix)
• Unreal
• Entangled
• Anagram (and the #bonkwave cheer)
• Living The Dream (my #Fedivision2024 entry, which made the top 10!)
• Let Me Off
• Bercée d’illusions

I also contributed two songs to the Not What I Call Bonk Wave Volume 003 triple album:

• C’est quoi (le bonkwave) ?
• La sieste/Don’t Mind Me (I actually did 4 versions of this one: instrumental, then with French lyrics, then totally different English lyrics, and the one on the album, which has the French lyrics in the left ear and the highly processed English lyrics in the right ear 😅)

Livestream

I did my first livestream ever as part of the #RadioFreeFedi #fediwave series, and played these 11 songs unplugged (sorry, no recording, you had to be there), including some that were never meant to be playable live on a guitar. And it got great reviews, too!

Collaborations

And last but not least, I contributed:

• Electric guitar to the January edition of @ChelidonFrame’s Asynchronous Drone Orchestra
• Vocals (and a bit of guitar and piano) to the Bonkwave Allstars Happy Bonkwave EP
• My own Rugged Scrublands version of Happy Bonkwave
• A spoken recording of the numbers 1 to 12, for a mystery project. I mention this because the result, Tart of Noise – Rejoice in 12, by Duchess Of Snork, which appeared on Disk 3 of Not What I Call Bonk Wave Volume 003, is awesome!
• Acoustic rhythm guitar (and tubular bells) to @Futzle’s gorgeous and moving I’m Staying Home This Christmas
• Plus other shenanigans behind the scenes...

I wonder if I missed anything (and if I have any music left in me? 😅)

Time will tell, and while this frenzy probably betrays an urge to escape the worlds’ downward Spiral, it was also inspired and fueled in large part by the incredible talent, creativity and energy of my fellow musical fedizens, most of whom I discovered through Radio Free Fedi and the tireless community-building of the Hamster behind the wheel.

Thank you thank you thank you ❤️.

Le premier disque du triple album de la troisième compilation #bonkwave est sorti !

Vous ne savez pas ce qu’est le #bonkwave ? Alors allez écouter Not What I Call Bonkwave vol 03, Disc A, Into The Bonk pour découvrir les 17 premiers titres contribués par la fine fleur des artistes indépendants du #fedivers.

Mais si ce n’est toujours pas clair, sachez que ma contribution a été pensée spécialement pour vous, camarades francophones ! En effet, pour tout comprendre (ou pas), allez écouter C’est quoi (le bonkwave) !

L’album est également disponible sur bonkwave.org et sur Mirlo.

Et merci à Emma de m’avoir prêté sa voix.

On the 21st or 22nd July 2023 (depending where you are in the world!) the concept of #BonkWave was born.

I am proud to have been part of the biggest Allstars line up yet, that came together to celebrate the first anniversary of this momentous day!

And I also contributed my very own Rugged scrublands version!

Listen and download for free on Mirlo, Faircamp and Bandcamp!