New single ‘fox e lady’ – an album called ‘beach cities’ by deathguard (Huge SOON) – and mapmilk

Hi! It’s been awhile- but I’ve been doin’ stuff! I moved to the beach, got engaged, and I opened a paper airplane hangar (the FAA is PISSED). Anyways, I guess I can start with the album: ‘beach cities’ is an album I’ve been working on for the past two years, starting shortly after ‘silent summer’. Living in the desert for a couple years there really made me miss the ocean so when the option to work remotely came up it seemed like a no brainer. ‘beach cities’ has sort of just bled out of me since then. It was great getting to dig into some jazz, city pop, punk, and random songs that pop up in the grocery where like 10 seconds of the bridge blows your head off and you’ve gotta go track it down and listen to it over and over again like ‘how in tarnation did they do that?’

I think something that was pretty clear during the transition from ‘silent summer’ to ‘beach cities’ is the chord palette. I found a lot of cool sounds to paint with – like 70s chord progressions. But like chord progressions that feel human y’know? Kinda nostalgic, but with my own stupid twist. I think all art comes from human connection, like every time the two paths intersect the potential for art is like unlit fireworks. I’m really proud of this album because it’s all about others.

‘fox e lady’ is a good indicator of what ‘beach cities’ is gonna be so hey, give it a listen – ‘fox e lady’ will be released on Spotify on Halloween 2022 with ‘beach cities’ following soon after with an official release date of [DATE][TIME].

mapmilk

mapmilk is my only other art deliverable over the past two years, time flies lol. Lol right? M8s?… We’re all slowly drifting toward the void- which is why I made mapmilk! The past 6 years of my life have been kind of centered around maps and data: putting data on maps, mapping the data, dating the map, etc. So I wanted to break it in the name of art and make something illogical, entirely undefined by satellite imagery, exact geographic locations, or any other real world thing. I just wanted to make up a fictional place that is aesthetically pleasing. So here’s the cheese:

One thousand years in the future, humanity is on the brink of collapse. Their last hope is to upload the remaining collective human consciousness, not into the cloud, but into a virus. Their mission is to send it off into space as a parting gift to whatever forms of life they may have been sharing the Milky Way with all these years.

Another thousand years pass, and the rocket carrying the human virus crash lands on Ylk, one of the thirteen moons of [redacted]. The rocket barely escapes burning up in the atmosphere and falls into a pink lake of potable water, surrounded by a lush landscape of cool landforms and veg. One of the many mysteries of the universe that humans did persist long enough to uncover is that every single solid asteroid, planet, and moon in a habitable zone is inhabited by cats. Regular old non-anthropomorphic cats, unchanged by time or climate. The breeds, behaviors, and colors on Earth are the same everywhere else. Sometimes they grow with other species on the planet they inhabit, but in most cases they are entirely alone. Ylk was one of those cases of being entirely alone.

A curious unnamed cat went to go check on what had disturbed his view of the pink lake of the moon, Ylk. As he swam up on the rusty rocket there was a quick TZZT and the unnamed cat felt a pinch in his leg. His vision faded to black and he was washed to the shore.

He awoke to a crowd of confused cats around him. He bolted upright and a flood of memories rushed through his head. The unnamed cat had been endowed with the collective knowledge of the humans who had perished a thousand years before- for humanity’s parting gift was not be studied, but to continue to exist as a parasite.

mapmilk takes place 100 years after the unnamed cat (a controversial figure in the future, often referred to as Jerb) unwittingly ate the apple from the tree of wisdom and spread the weight of human consciousness in the form of sneezes and handshakes. mapmilk is a rendering of the 69 countries and territories these cats imbued with forethought split themselves into. They were smart enough to avoid war, bearing the horrors of human colonialism in their minds, but hey, cats are sneaky and a lil greedy lol. Also I’d like to point out that the inhabitants of Ylk aren’t very driven individuals, like when they create something they’re too lazy to modify it to work for cats, they just pull directly from the human memory to make like trains n stuff, so imagine that heh.

https://opensea.io/Bathroom_Atlantis

Oh cool, are you interested? Well here’s the part where capitalism RUINS EVERYTHING. Yeah, I’m uh… I’m minting these maps as NFTs (lame I know) and selling them for like $10 per country (lamer I know but it’s 0.0069 ETH so hey that’s a little funny nyeh, Squidward?). They’re currently listed at 0.069 ETH so like $100, but don’t buy anything until it’s $10, and even that’s probably too much. I was just being greedy okay! But hey, you can own a part of Ylk arbitrarily split up by sentient cats… so that’s cool…

BEACH CITIES 202[redacted] BABY!!!!