Make like a tree and leave; make like a leaf and let go. Leave the excess of spring and summer’s growth cycle to the wind to become the dust and compost of the present’s integrating pasts. 

As the season of death and decay, autumn welcomes our meditation on finitude, natural limitations, change, and gratitude. After the latter half of summer and its creeping ennui, autumn arrives and cleans house, creating an atmosphere for assessing what sustains and what falls to the wayside in our own lives.

Nature’s annual phase of withdrawal, preparation for winter, and letting go of the inessential invite our thinking on similar themes in our life. Autumn’s cooling gusts may blow things in and out of our lives following the frolicking fickleness of summer’s youthful levity. The season provides an ideal backdrop for solitary-strolls. The solitude invites reflection and addressing one's interior, while the act of strolling invites integration through the processing of the passing environment in a way that stirs and progresses that reflection, as one physically moves their body through it.

Above all, autumn is a bittersweet time of introspection, acceptance, and change asking: what do you leave behind and what do you bring with you into winter, from this year of life into the next?

Signed, 
Former Minister of Loneliness

Integrative Autumnal Strolling Music

Over the past two years certain songs have given me mental flavors of drinking beers on a porch with friends around the end of summer. Lightly wistful though comforting tunes that shrug “It is what it is” and provide a soundtrack for aging in acceptance alongside like-minded others.

I see this “Porch Rock” as a subset of not-overly-sentimental jangle-pop/college rock/early indie rock. Key sonic associations are early R.E.M. and their imitators, The Clean, Mark Mulcahy, and Jacobites.

It’s geographically agnostic; the less twang-heavy sides of the Athens, GA scene, non-twee or post-punk entries of the British camp, and the Dunedin sound/Flying Nun Records all nail it. Temporally, most songs come from late-80s to mid-90s. Instrumentally, it's what you'd expect from rock of the era, though harmonica can be present in a non-bluesy or folk-rock way, so too can a light organ or even accordion at times. Guitar distortion, if even present, is typically kept light. Production mustn't be overly done, and while pop-potential is there, the sound remains clearly indie and left of the dial. 

Whether your porch is a balcony, a courtyard, a side/backyard by the grill, a rooftop, a neighborhood park, or a nearby canal, may you enjoy these tunes for sipping suds and cheersing to the last of the summer sunshine.   

Porch jam responsibly,
Former Minister of Loneliness

Beers On The Porch Mix

An arrangements of songs for the season of yields and consequence, the season of reaped outcomes from past efforts, of reflection, learning, integration, and gratitude. Got into my prog-folk bag a bit.

Harvest Songs

Recorded in the throes of another Berlin winter this year while thinking about those eventual first days of spring. To celebrate that yearly shift, the mix traces H2O's seasonal metamorphosis from still, dense ice into streaming water, moving from the cold and crystalline to the warm and free-flowing. Enjoy.

DEFROSTING W/ DJ SEAFOOD (rejected NTS mix ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

Serving up sonic-omakases and soothing selections for sensitive souls.

Member of The Short Kings and Skin II Skin Contact.

- - - - - - - - - 
02/14/24 - Repeat, Berlin
11/25/23 - D59B, Berlin (Skin II Skin Contact set)
10/25/23 - Repeat, Berlin
09/02/23 - Michelberger Hotel, Berlin
08/19/23 - Palabra Bar, Berlin
04/29/23 - Christa Kupfer, Berlin (Short Kings Set)
04/14/23 - Bar Bautrockner, Berlin
04/06/23 - Natural Selection, Berlin
04/01/23 - Palabra Bar, Berlin
04/14/22 - Horse Bar, Berlin
03/12/22 - Galerie ZeitZone, Berlin
03/08/22 - Bar Box, Berlin
02/26/22 - Four Quarters, London

DJ Seafood / Former Minister of Loneliness

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