Name: The Refusal to Stay by Athen Tobias
Duration: 3 min 16 s
Description: This song is about my own refusal to stay in one place for too long. Even when I settle, there’s always a part of me waiting to leave. The stay of refusal feels like it tangles in my hair, a reminder that I can’t sit still forever. It’s restless, high-energy, and carries the push to keep moving forward.

This song is about promises that don’t hold, the kind that look solid one day and disappear the next. Dates circled then erased, endings that never feel finished.


Still Deciding

Late is about timing that never lands the way you want it to. Waiting, showing up, and finding out too late it doesn’t matter. It’s the sound of missed time and opportunity and the weight that comes with it.

Late

Meant To Gather is about the kind of gatherings that never should have happened. Moments that looked like joy if you squinted, but underneath were scattered, awkward, and wrong. The song moves on bongo rhythm and chant, carrying the unease of people together but never really together.

Meant to Gather

Bitter Moon is about being away and coming home. It’s about distance, the quiet spaces in between, and leaving the door unlatched as a way of saying I’ll be back soon.

Bitter Moon

Whitehaven is about escapism to the beach, and the solitude I found there. It comes from Whitehaven Beach in the Whitsunday Islands, a place that took my breath away, but it’s also about every beach that gave me space to get away from people. This song carries that feeling of freedom, campfire warmth, and the hush that only comes when nothing is following you.

Whitehaven

This song is about my own refusal to stay in one place for too long. Even when I settle, there’s always a part of me waiting to leave. The stay of refusal feels like it tangles in my hair, a reminder that I can’t sit still forever. It’s restless, high-energy, and carries the push to keep moving forward.


The Refusal to Stay

This song is about people who come and go from your life. Some leave gently, some vanish without warning, and a few stay. That’s enough. It’s the opening track because it sets that truth right at the start.

Some Still Answer

This song is the tribute to Athen, my cat who was by my side for 17 years. It isn’t about putting everything into words, but about the presence he carried, quiet, steady, never asking for anything. I loved being alone, but I wasn’t lonely until he was gone. This track holds the small moments of memory, the routines, and the weight of absence that made alone feel different.


Not Asking

This one is about not listening to people who try to hold you back. It’s about moving forward without a plan, no directions, no signs, just keeping on with your own path.

Bare Handed, No Map

Aftermath is the debut album from Athen Tobias, the musical project of Brisbane-based artist Adam Oriti. Known first as a visual artist, Oriti spent years painting bold abstractions before grief redirected his creative path. In the silence that followed loss, music became the medium to carry what painting no longer could.

The album is both elegy and rebirth. Each track is crafted from original poetry written by Oriti, shaped into song with the aid of AI as a creative tool, not a replacement. The process became a collaboration between human memory and machine possibility, giving form to words that might have otherwise remained on the page.

Athen Tobias is named in honor of Oriti’s late pet, whose memory anchors the project. The music, like his paintings, is made for those who take time to look closer, patient listeners who uncover meaning in the layers.

Aftermath is not a polished pop record but a document of survival. It is an album that rewards attention, an intimate snapshot of an artist transforming grief into sound.

The Refusal to Stay

Athen Tobias

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