Music and Thoughts of the Month

Smiling in the sunshine.

Welcome to my monthly newsletter where I share thoughts on life and creativity, as well as new music (and sometimes free downloads).

Thought of the day

Today, I’ve felt very happy for no discernible reason. Just being out in the sunshine, enjoying being alive. Feeling light. This is unusual for me. When I feel joy, it is usually a heavier sort of emotion. Bitter-sweet, wistful, yearning to connect while also feeling the inevitable separation life will bring eventually. It’s just the way it works for me. I was wondering what it would feel like to be someone else for a day.

Music of the month

January has already rushed by and I've mostly used it to work on my upcoming album. But I also decided to do another cover song - this time a track by Empathy Test (currently one of my favorite artists). My version of their song Holding On is being released today. For me, Holding On is a song about breaking out of our past. What are we holding on to? What are we letting go of? Who will follow us, and who do we leave behind? The original song can be found on Empathy Test’s 2017 album Losing Touch.

You can stream or download the song here.

I’m also looking forward to another release, a collaboration with Nature of Wires from their upcoming album Trees. Australis is the first single from the album and will be available on the 17th of February. You can pre-save it here.

My Creative Process

I am currently working on my first album Natural Darkness. I’ve released albums before with other projects, and there’s already a large catalog of Madil Hardis releases out there - about thirty singles and EPs (I stopped counting).

However, creating an album, in an old-school way, is an entirely different beast. It’s not so much about the creative process itself - I could write music literally all day if I could afford not to work on other things.

But the process of putting a larger piece of work together that represents me as an artist, right now, as I am… That proves to be interesting.

I’m dealing with my own (real) expectations as well as the (often imagined) expectations of my peers and the industry as a whole.

As I am doing everything on this project - composing, recording, production, release, and marketing - it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters. You start to think of your work as a product - and that is important to some extent. I want my music to get heard, and to reach people, so I have to think about strategy from the onset.

However - in the middle of this net of audience insights, marketing, artistic goals, and expectations, I am still just me. Just someone who feels things and wants to share them.

After weeks of planning and strategy and overthinking, I’ve decided to give myself the freedom of exploration and creative play. No goals. No schedule. Just writing.

I feel vulnerable because I cannot fundamentally change what is coming out of me. I also feel empowered that there is a creative flow within me that carries me ever forward.

In that emptiness, I can breathe again. In the silence, something is waiting to be discovered.