The new album by Occurrence.

We started making this album in January 2019. But we didn’t know it. At the time, the idea was to record a single, maybe an EP, but definitely not a new album. We were all burnt out at the end of 2018, especially Ken. He had two plays in production in 2018, one in DC and one in London’s West End, plus we released our second album Everyone Knows the Disaster is Coming that summer. After we played our last show in November, we all needed a break.

But January happened, Cat came to New York, new music started happening. Ken finished some older songs and started quite a few new ones. Then Cat came back in March and we nailed a couple more songs including “A Parade of Regrets,” “The Happy Years” and “I Have So Much Love to Give.” In the case of that last song, Ken was playing the organ part and Cat ran into the studio and said, “I have to sing on that one,” while Hanya Yanagihara’s novel A Little Life provided the inspiration for Johnny on “The Happy Years.” The rest of the year was really productive, a very happy time where we found shelter from the anxiety of 2019.
 
By June, Ken started mixing these new songs with his friend and collaborator Daniel Kluger. Rather than just handing over the stems, Daniel and Ken spent months listening, re-arranging, adding and subtracting elements. But again, the band was in denial that we were making an album. We were just making songs. Lots of songs. By August, we had over twenty in various states of completion.

Then everything stopped. At the end of 2019, personal issues forced us to put recording on hold. And we all know what happened next. We had to cancel our 2020 spring show at MIT. March became April, and as Ken recovered from COVID, we thought everything was on hold indefinitely. But then some sunshine. In May, Daniel and Ken figured out a way to keep mixing the songs remotely using an app called ListenTo. And Ken and Johnny, since they were boyfriends who cohabitated, continued recording in the summer. 

In July 2020, Ken started re-reading Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse, a strange and dense book where each chapter defines a facet of being in love. That book became the catalyst for transforming the assorted songs into a proper record. Ken arranged tracks into a storyline: from falling headlong in love, the eventual betrayal and heartbreak, to coming out the other side of that experience changed. Each song, like each chapter in A Lover’s Discourse, is an exploration of a specific feeling associated with the amorous experience. 

We couldn’t have made this without our close friend Daniel Kluger. Christian Frederickson (from the band Rachel’s) played viola on three tracks, while actor-musician Peter Mark Kendall played guitar on “The Preferred One.” Thank you for adding your talents to these recordings. And a special thanks to you for listening.

xx Ken & Cat & Johnny xx
Summer 2021

I Have So Much Love to Give FINAL

Your Body Is Made of Flesh

Dark and melancholic. Somewhere between progressive, melodic house and melodic techno.

Sub Caesar - Into The Oblast (When Will You Be Home)(feat. Brunetti)

Sub Caesar