2: Ethereal and Alternatives

This song is the second I’ve completed, about the 4-5th I’ve worked on, for what I’ll consider an upcoming album - probably in reality, more like 2026…. EEEKKKK!!!

Life’s a Carousel - Spinning slow, spinning fast…

If I could say anything, it’s all about the ups and downs of life, and how life just keeps going, with or without you.

1: The Great Exhale

I was working on a song called Cyclical Meloncholy - which also was shortened to Cm, to represent it actually being in C minor. This was something I had floating around since 2020, in some epic Pink Floyd type synth rock tune. It had a little melody and some words, but nothing sat right with me, so it was shelved for years and years - circling back to clean up sounds and eq, but never to add anything else or change it.

So, I sat a bit, listened to my 5 year old unfinished recording, and the ska / upbeat part just clicked. I was so motivated with how it was progressing, I reworked the entire song structure, incorporating the ska, but also redoing all the lyrics and melodies - which meant cutting my original up into different sections and building all new.

It shifted then from Cyclical Meloncholy to The Great Exhale, and the first song of my TBD album is near finished - needs minor mixing and mastering…

Astral Punk

I played a couple songs for friends, and one came back saying, this is something he’d want to listen to later at night, outside under the stars - perhaps with a few libations… But in the conversation, he dropped the term Astral Punk. YES! This is exactly what I wanted… a new genre, blending some shoegaze elements with punk, emo, pop-punk for those big choruses and sing-a-longs.

Working it up, here’s the best description yet of what’s to come:

Imagine a genre that's like gazing at the stars from a gritty city rooftop. "Astral punk" would blend spacey, atmospheric synths and dreamy, otherworldly tones with the raw energy and rebellious spirit of punk rock. You’d have driving guitars and punchy rhythms, but layered with cosmic soundscapes, maybe even some synth arpeggios or reverb-soaked vocals that feel like they're echoing through the universe.

Lyrically, it could dive into themes of exploration, existential journeys, or the feeling of being a cosmic misfit—someone both grounded in punk’s rebellious attitude and reaching for something bigger and more ethereal.

In short, "astral punk" is a genre you could imagine as a fusion of starry-eyed wonder and the edgy pulse of the underground.