in order to understand,
i destroyed myself
My works are conceived as one continuous body: each piece leads into the next, carrying my personal and artistic journey forward. What follows is one work that took eleven years to complete — an album released as a sacrifice, a year of marketing that did not represent me, a deletion, a film that spent a year destroying itself, the album that all of it gave way to, and the night that album reached a stage.
Every part is real. The release was real, the posts were real, the deletion was real. The work was never any single object — it is the arc between them.
a dø
In 2020 I released A DØ — an album of music I had written in 2014 but never released. By the time it came out, I had already become someone else: the voice-only work that would define me was underway, and this record no longer represented who I was. But it was part of my journey, and I wanted it in the world before the newer work arrived.
one record given, so that another could take its place.
The title means ‘for two.’ The album was released as a sacrifice. It was never going to be allowed to simply exist; its release was the first movement of a longer work about self-destruction, and about what destruction makes room for.
- type
- Album — electronic-orchestral
- written
- 2014
- released
- 2020
- status
- Deleted from all platforms, 25.03.2021
- meaning
- ‘For two’ — giving way to II
anti-social media
Releasing an album that did not represent me meant marketing it — so I marketed it in a way that did not represent me either. Over the course of a year, I created fake Instagram posts around A DØ: a promotional life, performed. The marketing was inauthentic on purpose, because the authenticity was elsewhere, waiting.
a performance staged inside a feed, where the audience did not know they were an audience.
Anti-Social Media was the connective tissue of the larger work. When the year was over, the posts were deleted with the album. The performance’s ending was the only part of it that was fully sincere.
- type
- Durational performance art
- duration
- One year of posts
- medium
- Fake posts, marketing, persona
- teaser
- Nano Clow
- status
- Deleted with the album
25 . 03 . 2021
the album, the posts, the year — deleted.
#nothinglastsforever
All that remained was #nothinglastsforever: a film for the album, made with Nano Clow, hosted at nothinglastsforever.ca.
From April 10, 2021 to April 10, 2022, the film disintegrated. With each day of play-through it restarted at a lower bitrate, leaving its best available quality permanently behind. Watching it early meant meeting more of it; watching it late meant meeting what remained.
each day it restarted at a lower bitrate, leaving its best quality permanently behind.
The work questions the infinite expectation of streamed art — the assumption that a recording will always be there, at full resolution, whenever we are ready — and asserts the importance of present engagement with any particular work.
- type
- Digital installation — film
- with
- Nano Clow
- ran
- 10.04.2021 – 10.04.2022
- mechanism
- Each play-through restarted it lower
- lives at
- nothinglastsforever.ca
ii
While creating this album, I was both developing my sound as an artist and discovering more about who I am as a person at the same time. The concept of creating music using only my voice manifested completely on its own, without any prior intention or agenda. Upon reflection, the ‘voice’ concept feels almost obvious, as I was truly developing and expressing both my personal and artistic ‘voices’ in tandem with one another. The result is not only the album II, but changed versions of the self and artist behind it as well.
I felt inspired to create something that was truly my own — not trying to sound or be like any one or thing in particular, but letting the sound in my head translate in as raw and unfiltered a way as possible. This was a sonic parallel to the truth I would learn and choose to express, revealing my struggles with mental illness alongside the music’s release.
at the end of the first record, the album sonically destroys itself.
The album tells a story about self-destruction from front to back, in both a macro and micro way, and was designed specifically for the vinyl format: at the end of the first record, the album sonically destroys itself, prompting the listener to switch to the second of the two-part LP.
Three pieces on the album are not created with my voice alone. “Before The Fall” — a piece composed just prior to a self-destructive moment in my life. “In Order To Understand, I Destroyed Myself” — a piece that straddles the exact halfway point of the album, sonically descending into darkness and silence before beginning again in the darker second half. It includes a recording of a conversation during a road trip, moving by car from Vancouver to Saskatoon with my life partner at the time; the destructive moment was sabotaging that otherwise perfectly healthy and rewarding relationship in order to understand challenging aspects of myself. And finally “Fear, My Friend” — a piece written during a dark time in my life, post self-destruction.
The times these pieces were written in, and ultimately convey from my life, led to the eventual realization and understanding of my relationship with Bipolar Disorder Type II. Creating music using only my voice became a way to express myself directly — a means to channel and regulate my emotions.
The album concludes with an audio recording of the person behind the artist — simply creating and finishing the album in his studio, nothing else — representing the duality of who is behind the music. It is fittingly titled ‘Andrew’.
Through this album, I am speaking openly and honestly about my story with Bipolar Disorder in an effort to raise awareness and end the stigma around mental illness, and am donating a portion of proceeds from streaming and sales to organizations supporting mental health awareness and anti-stigma.
Aesthetically, the way the album is packaged — both figuratively and literally — mirrors the meaning of the album. The title ‘II’ represents the precise sonic symmetry of the album, as well as nodding to the type of my bipolar disorder. All of the album’s graphics were designed by Kenton Doupe by manipulating a single photograph of my eye, mirroring the voice concept debuted with this album.
Through this 1.5 hr cinematic and experimental concept album, my hope is simply to inspire emotion in my audience — a feeling of connection in those who struggle, and a sense of compassion in those who struggle to relate.
- released
- 11.11.2022
- duration
- 1.5 hr — two-part LP
- opens / closes
- A Voice (I) / A Voice (VI)
- concludes
- Andrew
- mastered
- Matt Colton, Alchemy Mastering
- art & visuals
- Kenton Doupe
a live
A LIVE is the debut live premiere of my work — a ninety-minute cross-medium theatrical performance incorporating all of the artistic elements that make me who I am: voice-only composition, dance, projection, and direction. The show opened and closed with A Voice (I) and A Voice (VI), just as the album II does.
Less than three months before the premiere, I shattered my leg — a physical mirror of the self-destruction, and the emergence from it, at the centre of this body of work. Moving forward with the project I had planned meant conjuring resilience and fortitude; walking out on stage less than three months later became part of the same journey of growth.
the body and the projections carry what the sound alone cannot.
The work grew directly out of ten weeks in Berlin in fall 2024, asking what a concert built on one voice could hold. Everything the audience hears originates from my voice; the body and the projections carry what the sound alone cannot.
- premiered
- 11.12.2025 — The Refinery
- duration
- 1.5 hrs
- visuals
- Kenton Doupe
- choreography
- Adrian Vendiola
- video documentation
- Alex Willems
- context
- Staged three months after a shattered leg
