What’s the story behind the album?

I wanted to make a powerfully transformational album and redefine the possibilities of contemporary pop music so I met a GRAMMY winning producer named Mark Zubek and we gave it a go. Written and recorded over a 5+ year timespan, ENSŌULAR (a triple pun of ensō-soul-solar) is an epic of immense delight, love and dis(en)closure. It’s an ode to language, imagination and self (or lack thereof) as multiplicity. At 26 songs total – one song for every letter of the alphabet — conceptually ENSŌULAR is designed like the alphabet to be recited in order whilst at the same time enabling the listener to scramble song sequences according to their mood. The scrambling of songs are designed to nevertheless cohere just like how re-sequenced letters formulate pathways in language, the re-arrangement of 26 building blocks of reality building novel semantic proliferations. Just like how some words are comprised of only a few letters while other times letters become increasingly meaningful within a larger conglomerate, listeners are encouraged to explore songs in a completely creative manner according to their whims and temporal listening constraints. In any case, each song has been carefully made to create a transformational and illuminating experience for the audience. Every letter is an entry point to a beginning, end and conjunctive tissue expressing both fragment and totality: the occasion of each song occurs as such too.

Artistic influences include: Virginia Woolf, Grant Kirkhope, Sun Ra, Charles Olson, Amon Tobin, Giorgio Agamben, Animal Collective, Charles Mingus, Kendrick Lamar, St. Vincent, Michael Boughn, Julia Holter, Koji Kondo, Jean Luc Nancy, Shabazz Palaces, Paul Mooney, Jean Baudrillard, The Velvet Underground, Madvillain, Judith Butler, Pixies, Fever Ray, Talking Heads, David Lynch, Karl Marx, Deerhunter, Marshall McLuhan, Buddha, Taylor Swift, Oneohtrix Point Never, Grant Morrison, Lana Del Rey, Pink Floyd, Pavement, Lil B, Federico Fellini, Charles Darwin, Ishmael Reed, Radiohead, William Carlos Williams, Michael Jordan, John Lennon, Joanna Newsom, Neutral Milk Hotel, Grimes, Terence Mckenna, Emily Dickinson, Shigeru Miyamoto, Ingmar Bergman, Danny Elfman, The Dalai Lama, Death Grips, Philip Glass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Kathy Acker, William Blake, JK Rowling, Deerhoof, David Bowie, Kanye West, Ariel Pink, Julianna Barwick, Alan Watts, Tim & Eric, Anohni, Brian Wilson, Wayne Gretzky, My Bloody Valentine, The Doors, Beyonce, The Field, Franz Kafka, James Blake, Alfred Jarry, Black Dice, Gertrude Stein, The Lord, and many more.