Sometimes when I sit down to start working on a song it can be a slow process. It'll take a long time to reveal where the song is heading, where the peaks and valleys will sit, the flourishes and the small details. Every once in a while it just all comes out in one giant wave, though.

That was the deal when I started working on "New Histories" in memory of my friend and labelmate Johnny Igaz, who died in the Oakland Ghost Ship fire last December. Johnny was one of the best folks--- an extremely sweet, positive guy that I just can't even begin to say enough about to do him justice in this space.

The song was meant to both remember him and simultaneously work through what happened, and it flowed out over the course of just a couple of days, like a storm. Johnny and I used to send music back and forth we were working on and bounce off ideas and mixes to get input. It was strange for Fictions to be the first record in a decade that I was working on that he didn't hear before I'd finish. This felt like as proper of a send-off as any, and I'd like to think he'd have been happy with the results.

<3 Miss you, man.

Fictions on Bandcamp

You can listen to some of Johnny's music here:

Mus-OK (with Benjamin Pacheco)
Ill Mondo (with Jeff Smothers)
Nackt

And here's the original thing I wrote about Johnny when all this happened.