It's been my custom for almost a decade to record and release a small volume of music every year on Christmas (I'm not religious, but then, neither is Christmas). These releases have always taken the form of home-burned CDs adorned with handmade artwork. My actual, "serious" releases, as in the albums that have been physically released and pressed in a factory-type place, number only one.
Even though we live in an age where the physical format has been rendered near-irrelevant in practical terms, the physical body of work still carries weight as a kind of accomplishment benchmark, proof that the artist has it together enough to push through every stage of the release. While I still acknowledge and respect the physical release, I do think it's time we moved on from this somewhat archaic mode of thinking. We are, today, both cursed with a very unforgiving economy, but blessed with the wonders of the internet and free recording software beyond Steely Dan's wildest dreams. Anyone can make music now, and through the internet, get it to anyone. Although the factory-pressed record still carries with a certain totality and purity that the DIY release may not have, they are both equally worth of study and enjoyment.
So when I invite you to enjoy my entire catalogue of releases through my very very good friends at Knick Knack Records, I encourage you to treat them all equally. Rough, smooth, digital, physical, acoustic, distorted - they are, to me, totally equal expressions of where I was musically at the time of their release, and while I may prefer some to others, you might disagree with me, and who am I to argue with your taste?
And of course, there is this year's release: a 14-song, 57-minute digital-only release; a full album of music that, while nonexistent in the corporeal sense, is still every bit the full and complete work that such a release might be. It might be a dark and uneven listen - flawed and uncomfortable - but I suffered and drove myself hard while making it, and I'm as proud of it as any work I've ever completed. Because it's alright to distance yourself from the mode of thinking you know you are uneasy with. You don't have to submit to the outer world's perceptions of what should be important; it's OK to be yourself, and it's OK to disconnect. Music is not obligated to be physically extant any more than you are - we are all relating to one another digitally, and have been for years, but it has not dimmed the human spark one bit. Filtered it, perhaps, and exacerbated its tendency toward hedonism and self-obsession, but the human soul remains fiercely real beneath the pixelated tapestries we weave to communicate with one another.
So without further aggrandizement, I give you my collected works, available for the first time ever in one place, complete with today's ear-piercingly fresh release, OK To Disconnect. Approach, enjoy, and disseminate.
Thank You,
Sindri Eldon
https://knickknackrecords.com/products/sindri-eldon-ok-to-disconnect-download
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