Category: Anderhill

This conceptual album, Subway Music, is partly based on my love and personal experience with train travel. In my 20s and 30s, I likely traveled upward of 40,000 miles by train.

I had three goals for this late 2019 Anderhill release:

1. To create music that I felt captured the feel and emotion of traveling by train and by subway.
2. To create longer compositions than I’d previously created. The tracks range from 8-12 minutes each.
3. To create music that people might enjoy while commuting by subway.

The result is a 5-track, 50-minute album of music that incorporates my interpretation of the droning and hypnotic feeling of riding the trains. – dse

This short, 4-track, 2019, Anderhill EP, Big Empty Space, starts out with a different sound. A very sparse and bluesy looped guitar and vocals with simple hand claps, not much more. The second track is a wide-open ambient piece. There’s a big sense of space on the EP, thus the name.

The third and fourth tracks are both heavier, but still lend that sense of wide-open space to the music. The EP marks a willingness to try new things musically while still maintaining a sense of the original Anderhill sound. – dse

No, I wasn’t borrowing from the Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses. This Anderhill EP is titled Wild Ponies because the music was inspired by some research I’ve done on Iceland, Scotland, and the Shetland Islands.

On this recording, I sample a simple whistle for the opening track. The third track, “Moder Dy” is a reference to an old form of ocean navigation. When visibility was poor, sailors would ride what they called the mother wave, or moder dy. I attempted to compose a soundscape that might raise the feeling of what riding the mother wave might have been like. – dse

On the EP, Alaska, Anderhill adds a new element to the music. Starting with my second recording, Out of the Radio Static, I’ve used sampling. However, until Alaska, I was primarily sampling white noise by using everyday objects like dishwashers and ceiling fans. This EP marks the start of sampling and looping musical instruments.

The first track, “Ylenol,” samples slide guitar, the second track, “Midnight Serenade,” a djembe drum. Sampling bits of musical performance within Anderhill music adds a new element to the music, opening the door to new ideas and creativity. – dse

Rudimentary Elements, Anderhill’s longest album when it was released, has eight tracks. As you might guess based on the title, the music gets back to basics. Rudimentary, my dear.

The 11th Anderhill release is sightly different from much of my previous work. There are more beats and arpeggiated parts on this album, more drive. Although the music is less ambient, the second track, Garbage Out, is an exception, which is based on the sample of a garbage truck dumping my garbage.

There are many other samples on this album, including drumming on a bucket and blowing into a beer bottle. The last track, Tales of Atticus, was written after learning an old friend had lost his daughter shortly after she gave birth to his grandson, Atticus. – dse

On Anderhill’s 10th EP, I considered human hustle and bustle, the noise we create as a society. I’ve always found the idea of incorporating the sounds of cars, busses, and squeaky brakes into music fascinating. Some call it sound design. Some call it ambient.

The machinery we create makes it’s own music. One of my goals as a composer is to capture those sounds and weave them back into my own music for playback. It’s a loop.

The Noise We Make includes samples of traffic, electronic hums, and other everyday sounds. – dse