A Defiant Heart

I released a new ambient single today, “At the end of this is nothing”

Spotify

Apple Music

After much effort, I am so excited to finally share MMXXI with you! Links to listen are included below. For me, this album evokes feelings of space and travel. The rocky cliffs of a great unknown. As of this week, I’ll be starting a year of full-time travel in a van that we’ve made in to a home. I am excited at what creative opportunities and inspirations this will create for myself! I’ll be looking forward to sharing that with you as well.

This is why I’ve called this MMXXI, since 2021 marks the year of some big changes for not only my life, but I think many people who are going through a transformation or rebirth right now.

If you want to follow my travels, and hear new music first (I’ll be scoring these travel videos as well), then please consider following my travel YouTube channel.

• Spotify
• Apple Music
• YouTube Music
• Deezer
• Tidal
• Amazon
• Bandcamp
• Pandora

Here are five experiments in electronica, orchestra, and composition, with the purpose of evoking all emotions: sorrow, happiness, fear, hope, regret, and hopefully redemption. I’ve always wanted to take people someplace else with a song, so this is the continuation of my journey as a composer and a producer to hopefully make me better at achieving that goal.

• Spotify
• Apple Music
• YouTube Music
• Deezer
• Tidal
• Amazon
• Bandcamp
• Pandora

Track list

The Ballet Suite
The introduction for this EP is inspired by my life-long obsession with Dmitri Shostakovich (which should come as no surprise, I once dedicated an entire album to deconstructing one of his pieces). He was a master of epic, cinematic orchestra. The piece begins with a simple bass line which repeats again and again. It’s joined with counter melodies by guitars, horns, strings, synths, and drums, ushering in an earth-shattering climax before dying off again in to a simple bass, flute, and piano outro.

Canon
This is a bit of a reprieve after the introduction, but continues to feel like an introduction of its own. Organ, strings, and piano build on a theme before disappearing in to nothingness, only to be brought back in to a variation on the theme by gentle orchestrations, and guitars. You can hear my Sigur Rós influences throughout this particular piece. They’re a band I’ve admired for many years, and will be the first to say they have inspired and will continue to inspire a great deal of my music.

Disaster is Restless
This is the title track, and starts much like any other. Just four chords repeated again and again, as more and more instruments and synthesizers join the chorus, ebbing and flowing around a simple piano solo which repeats itself as the song unfolds. I wanted to evoke a feeling of sunrise, and maybe even a bit of peace here. Ironically there’s nothing very disastrous about this song, which was the intent, as I was hoping to juxtapose the title with the contents of the music.

Forever Dawn
This song is, in a lot of ways, a “Part 2” of the second track on the EP: Canon. You will hear similar themes, chord progressions and melodies that were introduced in Canon, but in a different way. When I refer to a Canon, I mean it in the strictly literal sense, as a singular source that has been accepted as the original, genuine article, that many variations might be derived from.

7,000 Years
This is the closer, and hopes to give something of an epic conclusion to this release. It’s the only song with vocals, and yet the vocals are barely intelligible, as they’re heavily processed with various effects, but in general, the song is about how we’re all sometimes guilty of waiting for the next big thing, unable to accept life as it is right here and right now. One day, when I have a particular thing, or once I’ve achieved a particular milestone, then I’ll be happy. We predicate our happiness on fantasies. We have this invisible to-do list that has “happiness” at the end, if only all these criteria are met. I don’t know of a way out of this trap, but hopefully being aware of it is a step one of sorts.

Thanks for listening, you precious few 🙂

• Spotify
• Apple Music
• YouTube Music
• Deezer
• Tidal
• Amazon
• Bandcamp
• Pandora

A Defiant Heart’s debut album “At the Edge of the World” debuted on June 16, 2020. You can stream this on your favorite music network.

• Spotify
• Apple Music
• Tidal
• Google Play
• Bandcamp
• YouTube Music
• Amazon Music
• Pandora
• Deezer

As many of you know I’ve been making music as dep for quite a while now. Really since the 90s, but in earnest since the early 00’s. I’ve released quite a few albums under dep online, with varying degrees of success.

I find people fall in to either one of two camps: those who get absolutely nothing out of my music and can’t listen to more than 30 seconds of it (perhaps because they find it boring, or otherwise uninteresting), and those who have to pull over on the side of the road because it generates such an intense emotional moment within them that they can’t even drive the car (true story). There are those who ignore me completely, and those who are compelled to send me hand-written letters in the mail (I love this). Naturally, my music is for the latter group who I am very thankful for. This is probably you. Thanks for being here. 🙂

I feel like my time releasing music as dep is at an end. I’m ready for a new name, a new chapter. As a result, A Defiant Heart was born. If you’re a fan of this type of music, I invite you to subscribe on YouTube and Spotify to be notified of future releases.