Every improv jam session since January 2020.

Tonight's Jam   [2020]

downtime

from the wild

Whispers

2020-2022: Melbourne declared the end of its final restrictions after more than two and a half years, from ~March 2020 to October 2022.

2020:   16   [1:44:42] https://soundcloud.com/existenz-4/sets/mindfulness
2021:   28   [2:41:30] https://soundcloud.com/existenz-4/sets/tonights-jam-2021
2022:   26   [2:24:10] https://soundcloud.com/existenz-4/sets/tonights-jam-2022

2023:   63   [6:50:39] https://soundcloud.com/existenz-4/sets/tonights-jam-2023

It is hard to describe to people who weren't there how challenging it was to have a carrot of freedom dangled in front of you time after time and for a long time, only to have it continually pulled away from you on a whim over and over and over, until - then. Living alone through this time amounted to persisting through to whenever the end was of what amounted to be one of the most confronting durations of time I'd ever experienced.

Isolation does strange things to people and I am (or was) a social creature. 
Thankfully i had a piano for company. 

A love affair was born between it and I at some point in the first half of the year 1990. It has occupied more of my time, space and energy than any other thing ever. I am grateful for being able to sit down when needed, to imagine and improvise, to play the thoughts and feelings and emotions and ideas and happenings and reflections - and to be able to hear what it is that is being thought and felt, and for this to be able to bring me into the present moment and mindfully remain there for a time. "maybe you can touch the taste by the sense of smell" - Apollo 440.

What began with a foolish naive optimism turned into a very long and dark time, and May 2020 signalled the end of the happiness in the music - for the next 18 months at least until January 2022 saw an escape to the Tasmanian motherland, a meaningful reconnection with what had been previously lost and finally the opening of light and space and love again.

In the music, 2020 was, aside from an initial optimism, sparse and very inward. 2021 - 2022 was a similar rhetoric though increasingly more frequent, as the need to turn to this probably escalated at about the rate a darkness was intensifying and my mental health was spiralling.

Correspondingly, the tone of the music shifts from an uncertainty and yearning to an optimism, triumph and hope, through the course of ~2 years of varying levels of solitary confinement.

This is that musical journey.

Album Image: 1/3/2020 - the first day of Autumn taken from my balcony @brunswickeast

2020-2022 Lockdown, Melbourne:   the times

triple figures

Tonight's Jam   [2021]

2021-04-05

2145

2021-12-04

21124

Tonight's Jam   [2022]

2022-08-13

22813 Hymn to Her | Easy

Icehouse vs Stevie Nicks vs Don Henley vs Underworld vs the Beloved vs Existenz

2022 Winter Party One

existenz vs GreatSouthernLand|EdgeofSeventeen|BoysofSummer|BornSlippy|Let'sComeTogether

2311

2312

23115

23123

23510

23516

23519

23620

2448 two

Tonight's Jam

20113

20214

i had recorded a song the night before, and based on the feedback i received from a few friends about the experiences they had with it, i spent the next day creating this

20215   [Eve, Robyn, Otis]

2054 Jam vs Hurt | Johnny Cash | American IV: The Man Comes Around | 2002

2055 [Cups | Underworld | Beaucoup Fish | 1999]

Tonight's Jam vs Papa Was a Rolling Stone (The Temptations) vs Disco Inferno (The Trammps) vs Owner of a Lonely Heart (Yes) vs All Along the Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix)

20515 Old School Max Cheese Mash!!!

20910

2020-10-31   [Tonight's Jam]

201031

20112 [Jam vs Lorde - Royals vs Kings Of Leon - Fans]

Tonight's Jam:   2020-11-19

201119

Tonight's Jam:   [2020]

2020-12-03

20123

2021-01-27

21127

one man, one piano:
15+ years, 275+ jams: 25k+ plays in 100+ countries.

Improv jam sessions.

yymmdd.

free for everyone.

Connect with me on instagram @existenzinsta