Hey Friends!
My new album “Kantos” its officially out today!
At a time when so many people had begun to panic about AI and what it might mean for our future, I started working on this record as a way to explore the concept of grounding ourselves in our humanity. The album title is a nod to Hyperion Cantos and to Immanuel Kant, but it also refers to ‘canto’ meaning ‘I sing’ in Spanish. The idea is that even with so much technological advancement, songs are still something we very much rely on to connect with other people. There’s a great deal of value in human innovation: if we don’t value our humanity, what are we valuing at all?
Watch the amazing music video for Lilliputian Chop by @tonarianimation that just premiered on Crunchyroll! (I animated the music notes and @iheartjlp made the typography 😉).
Being immersed in the whole dance-punk scene in New York in the 2000s was very formative for me, and a lot of this record was heavily influenced by bands like The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem. During the pandemic I got a Fender Strat and got really excited about the tone. It reminded me of the stuff Nile Rodgers was making with Chic in the ’70s, and I made a conscious decision to build the demos around the guitar and all these cool drums loops I was playing around with. When it came time to record Kantos, I headed to Chase Park Transduction (a studio in my former home of Athens, Georgia) and joined forces with my long time collaborator, engineer Drew Vandenberg (Faye Webster of Montreal, Toro y Moi), and a group of British musicians, Sweet Loretta, that I met on tour in Europe in summer 2023 (who are touring with me this fall!). The structure of the songs didn’t really change from the demo version, but the feel of everything completely transformed. It was definitely an affirmation of how working with live musicians can add a real element of purpose to the track.
If there’s anything I want people to come away with when they hear this record, it’s a feeling of excitement about the possibilities of human-created art. Even as we’re learning more about all the amazing things AI can do, I think humans will always be one step ahead in terms of our creativity and innovation. There’s still no limit to what we have to offer.
At it’s core, Kantos is a party album about the possible end of humanity as we know it, at turns deeply unsettling and sublimely joyful. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and I can’t wait to see you on tour!
