LWSD !)

LET ME BE CLEAR. This is Phil Westerns music. (Except 3 tunes of mine 29:17 to 44:30) I just had the pleasure of  adding things and jamming/performing it with him live. These are live recordings so "grain of salt factor in effect" ( Sorry about the line hum, our gear is old and temperamental but this is all i got) I will miss you so much you fucking genius...

This weekend the world lost one of its most original musicians and I lost one of my favourite people of all time, Phil Western. I met him when I first moved to Vancity in 2003 as he was one of my teachers at audio school. To me, he was as he once described the author Bukowski, “instantly likeable”. I became friends with him almost immediately because of our mutual music taste and because I was a very broken person at that time. Phil had a strangely comforting way of making what you perceived to be your most painful experiences be really really funny somehow, a rare talent I try to emulate to this day. Before long he started inviting me to his studio on the Sunshine coast and watching the guy work was truly mind splitting to me. If you never actually saw Phil working on music you missed out because it wasn’t like he was listening to it, it was like he was inside it. When he would add parts in sometimes I would find myself going, you’ve gotta be kidding me, and then as the song progressed and he started to fit it into place, i’d think how brilliant that section is and how the hell did he make that work so well. It’s very fair to say I learned more about song writing from hanging out with the guy at his studio than at my entire 3 years of schooling. I often find myself trying to mimic his style intentionally or unintentionally out of pure admiration. He exposed me to the magic of vintage synthesizers and their powerful happy accident powers. He also got me my first festival gig ever at Soundwave in 2004 playing live samples and synths on his set which basically led to kick starting my entire career. Musically I owe the guy just about as much as you can owe a guy. Phil is easily….EASILY one of my favourite musicians of all time. I have hundreds of his songs and there are very few I don’t love, which is more than I can say about a lot of my other favourites. I had the great pleasure of doing some work on the first KONE record with him, jamming on a bunch of his live shows and doing the collab project Sick Bay with him, of which there were only 3 live shows so if you caught one you’re fortunate.  All of Phil music sounds better today. I hate this and I’m really fucked up about it. As i remember him it keeps smashing me in waves and making a mess out of me. I will miss him forever and I don’t know if that's because I’ll never have anymore music from him or if I’ll never hear him laugh infectiously about something thats probably really inappropriate and yet so truthfully cutting its soul rattling. I also hate that I can’t tell him all this personally because it is all 100% true. I feel so heavily for his friends and family and especially his daughter as I know they are all hurting a lot right now. The best thing you can do is celebrate the guys contribution to the music world. Put it in your life, play it real fucking loud (Phil was also the loudest monitoring person I’ve ever met, another nasty habit I picked up from him haha) and realize that there are very few real artists around anymore that have a dedicated vision and tone that is as sincere and personal as his was. I would link a song I love but there are straight up way way too many in so many different styles one is not gonna do it. If you never heard of him before and get his catalogue and check it out (as is my hope) you’re going to….. have a lot to digest. Please listen to him music, its really really important. Godspeed Western, you are never forgotten… 

Go to:

https://philwestern.bandcamp.com/

click on any release and there is an option to buy his entire discography for 35USD. Its like 40 albums DO IT. TRUST ME

Sick Bay (Phil Western and Longwalkshortdock) Live at Rifflandia 2013

Here's my very last minute remix of Psymbionic's Hypnotoad for the Gravitas Recordings remix contest. It got a bit dreamy and floatier than I had originally intended but I kinda like it that way now. Hope you dig it. Heres the link if you wanna enter and the link to the original tune. Much love, and thanks to Psymbionic and Gravitas for having this contest.

Remix Contest:

https://gravitascreate.com/remix-psymbionic/

Original tune:

https://soundcloud.com/psymbionic/psymbionic-hypnotoad?in=psymbionic/sets/carbonbasedlifeform

LWSD !)

Moatherma