This album is material from two different events hosted by suddenlyLISTEN in the last year. Side A is a concert that I did in September, 2019, at the Bust Stop Theatre where I was the opening act for Erwan Keravec and Hamid Drake's Urban Pipes. It is two improvised solo pieces titled Part 1 Part 2. I had just moved back to Nova Scotia so this felt like a special show for me, I had been practicing a lot in Montreal and was feeling good, so I brought Dario along to record the show.

Side B is a piece that was commissioned by suddenlyLISTEN for their COVIDeo series. It is called There never was a plan. Despite the title this is one of the few solo pieces I have recorded that does have a plan. It is built around two max/msp patches that I created and travels through 3 distinct zones of improvisation. in regards to the patches, one is a looping patch that only repeats the loop after a randomly selected interval of either 1-3 seconds, which is the marimba you hear. I wanted it to seems like the marimbas have a pattern, but there isn't one, a theme I've been exploring a lot lately, the illusion of pattern, the illusion of stability. The second patch follows this thread, it is a large interval delay that is set to arbitrary amounts of time, enough time that I can't set up any kind of pattern with any kind of reliability.

I decided to name the whole piece There never was a plan. in light of recent global events, local events, and my own history. When I recorded the A side I was starting another degree at University, when I recorded the B side I was in my parents garage laying low durning the pandemic. Everything I had planned was cancelled, quickly. And that was the case for everyone around the world. Around this same time a gunman killed nearly 20 people in the province where I live. For me this piece, this album, is a meditation on chaos and our desire to find order in it.

Special thanks to Norm Adams and everyone at suddenlyLISTEN for their continued support. When Norm took an interest in my playing it opened a lot of doors for me and I am very thankful that he came to see Anteater play in the basement of the Atlantica Hotel in 201?.

Check out the video version of There never was a plan. here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuGDfbjFdAM