Steve Swartz

<p>I don’t know anyone who escaped the intense gravity of 2020. In addition to a pandemic, this year also saw the unexpected passing of my father. A loss I’m still trying to process. I’ve spent a great deal of time contemplating death, disease, and division over the last several months. Music has always been my primary outlet of expression. As a result, I made a lot of music in 2020. (Four releases!) But as I land on the other side of them, I find myself increasingly feeling lost and out of place. I am often daydreaming about being somewhere else and unreachable. This sense has carried over into my music listening habits as well. I’ve desired quieter sounds that feel less tethered to a place or time. Fewer words. More feeling. To, perhaps, communicate something words cannot yet find. And that is what I have found in these songs over the last several months. To me, each of these pieces feels like rivers that drift or breeze stirring trees in a geography&nbsp;I would prefer to dwell. So I sit in these songs and let them fill my house throughout the days and evenings until, hopefully, I embody the spirit of their imagined origins.</p> <ol> <li><a href="https://johncarrollkirby.bandcamp.com/album/conflict" title="John Carroll Kirby">John Carroll Kirby</a> “Canyon (Waiting Alive In A Canyon)”</li> <li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Day-Earth-Brian-Eno/dp/B0009HL7JM" title="Brian Eno">Brian Eno</a> “And Then So Clear”</li> <li>3617 “Orphans of The Sky”</li> <li><a href="https://dedekindcut.bandcamp.com/album/tahoe-ded007" title="Dedekind Cut">Dedekind Cut</a> “Tahoe”</li> <li><a href="https://archivesdubmusic.bandcamp.com/album/wildlife-addendum" title="Warmth">Warmth</a> “The Creek”</li> <li><a href="https://music-from-memory.bandcamp.com/album/broken-belief" title="Toshifumi Hinata">Toshifumi Hinata</a> “Misldsummer Night”</li> <li><a href="https://melodyastruth.bandcamp.com/album/passive-aggressive" title="Johnny Nash &amp; Suzanne Kraft">Johnny Nash &amp; Suzanne Kraft</a> “Time, Being”</li> <li><