What a Year

As a creative I've been on my bag on the music stuff. Not so much on the photography game, but I'm finding myself letting photography sort of rest a bit. I have some New Years Resolutions that will involve me doing something different with photography that I'm actually excited about. It will make more sense once I get the ball rolling.

This release was a fun one as I continued my high as an observer of Japan. It felt new, but it also felt like home and I cannot even tell you how happy I was to experience that, let alone, be able to write about it in the musical sense. It was cool writing those drum scripts in JP and be able to bring that experience home. I'm forever grateful to my wife and best friend that we got a chance to experience that together. I'm definitely wanting to go back and this time I'll learn the language a bit lol. This was recorded on a Tascam 424.





Quite Life Vol II was released a few months after Japan Scripts and this release was just one of those "I feel like writing and release something" type of thing. And Quite Life series is kind of that concept. Of course its a reaction practice of Olympus Pen F images that I've taken over the years and deciding how I want the direction of the work go with the image that I decide to choose as a front cover. This was also recorded on a Tascam 424.





Probably my messiest recording yet. "Age 40 - 1985" is a coming of age record lol, but it defined a lot of what I was dealing with for the last few years being able to have stability and realizing that my life is loud in my head, but quiet outside. A lot has changed over the years and with the realization that my writing has gotten tighter after this record gave me a better perspective as to how I'm going to continue to make music. I'm happy about a lot of things and to be able to melodically express this musically was cathartic, but frustrating at the same time. I realized that making a full length record is tough and you have to take time to make sure the songs you write fit in the mold. Being that this was a recording diary for the last few years a lot of takes needed to be scrapped, some saved, angles of songs needed to be reviewed and order of songs needed to be placed carefully. I don't know if I'll be going through this approach again writing, but it did give me some idea of how I want to approach the next recordings. I love this record despite it being so flawed and it being my first full length release. This was recorded on REAPER DAW (godlike DAW for indie musicians like myself)





This is the final release of the year for me and it was a collaboration with my brother Daniel Dominguez. This was set to release late last year, but due to the fires in the Palisades along with contract market negotiations that LIKHA was trying to sort out the record did not release until late this year. To be honest I hated the fact that this was a thing with a record that Daniel and I had created, but to try out a different avenue for release I had to stay patient and let it rock when it was ready to go. This is the original cover for the record. When you search for this record on streaming platforms you'll see totally different font.
We had to comply to the LIKHA version of it if we were going to see some type of "in" towards the commercial industry. Even on some of the posts regarding the record release LIKHA had done this weird AI attachment that I did not like at all. I understand they're doing a lot for us, but at this point I think I'm going to continue to release music independently with Daniel for the forseeable future. I need control of the work we complete. I don't want to compromise and I want to stick to the direction for this next record collab we will do soon. This was recorded on REAPER DAW and passed back and forth with Daniel via Email.


(==========)


I'm thinking next year I'll be doing much of the same, but on a much higher altitude. There are some things I'm wanting to do differently. I have some projects I'll be doing next year that I won't discuss quite yet. In the meantime I'm going to be living off the high that I've been able to accomplish much of the work I've dedicated this whole year. Being prolific is to be imaginative and being imaginative is to be open. I love being an artist and I think I'll keep that going until I can't no more.

- Arthur (LST LVS)

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