Passage of Remnants

Credits

Matthew Lyon: Synthesizers & Sampling, Field Recording, Piano, Melodica, Guitar; Production, Cover Photo

Micheal Southard: Mastering

Special Thanks: Alyssa, Jacob, Jason, Jeremy, Jerrett, Luisa, Tim

Notes

Passage of Remnants collects four of my previously released tracks from May 2023 – May 2021 into one place.

These songs tell a story of attempts to thrive in spite of misery, of finding mystery and beauty where most don’t bother to look. In their dreary, moody, melancholic way, these songs through both their themes or what I have learned about myself in the process of learning how to finish them have been a catalyst for myself to finally get a diagnosis for ADHD and to start dealing with lifelong depression.

I took the cover photo at Capitol Lake in Olympia, Washington.

Rouse the Fragments

Originally released on the Triplicate Records spring-themed compilation, Music for Magnolia Trees. I took inspiration from spring in the Coastal Pacific Northwest, which comes in fits and starts, where we’re on the tail end of the majority of the sunless seasons, with a few nice days teasing something brighter as early as March, and a yet a June so dreary it’s often called Juneuary.

Passage of Remnants

Originally released on the Triplicate Records compilation Music for Dotted Lines, I started the piece by imagining I was writing for the soundtrack to a video game I had wanted to make half a lifetime ago, for an area of exploring the ruins of a advanced but departed civilization. I wrote this in the early part of 2022, while dealing with burnout from unfulfilling work, pandemic parenting, and neurodivergent burnout.

Where Shadows Bloom

Originally released as the B-side to my early 2022 single When Both Became Neither, this actually started as a piece for a prompt challenge in fall 2021 – the prompt being in two parts: write a piece with ten parts, then discard six of them. I was mostly happy with how it turned out, but a week later a new melody for the climax & ending parts (starts about 1:45) started playing in my head, I really liked the way it fit.

Prelude to Blue Hour

Originally released on the Triplicate Records compilation Time Lapse, which had a time limit of two and a half minutes. Some years prior I commuted by bicycle through an area in Portland where the light rail and a freeway interchange came together in a mass of bridges. This piece was inspired one evening on my way home, I heard someone busking, hearing them fade in an out as I moved through the urban landscape, as their sound echoed off all the bridges, intermingled with the noise of rush-hour traffic and trains. The pad sound in this piece is based on a (separate) recording I made of Portland’s MAX light rail train.