The last few years have been a time of life-changing upheaval, discord, and uncertainty. But as much as that era turned life as we know it upside down, many of the most compelling stories to come out of it haven't necessarily been about this era of history directly, but rather the ways it served as a backdrop behind our already complex and often difficult human lives. How did it inform the changes already going on in your life? As you changed, did your art change with it? What did you learn to do that previously seemed out of reach? Who are you now?
In the broad sense, these are the concepts that inspired musician Devin “Darty” Purdy (Chron Goblin, Gone Cosmic) to form his solo instrumental project Musing, which he encapsulated on its deeply introspective, ambient debut, Somewhen.
The story here is that, for Darty, there was already an overwhelming amount of change going on before the world shuttered: His rock ‘n’ roll band Chron Goblin (for whom he has played guitar since the group formed in 2009) had slowed down, trading in their years of testosterone-fueled party riffs and a grueling schedule of touring and recording and opting instead to play just a couple of shows a year. He then formed the bluesy, heavy-psych project Gone Cosmic, which was immediately met with excitement and opportunities until live music came to a halt in 2020. Shortly thereafter, a serious, life-threatening accident involving one of his band members called for a band hiatus to allow for healing and rehabilitation. By late 2021, Darty found himself not only in the midst of the collective pandemic anxiety felt by all, but also without a musical project or collaborators to create with for the first time in over a decade.
As if all of the aforementioned events weren’t enough to completely change a person’s life, it was also around this time that he and his wife found out they were going to have a baby boy. And while the news was met with joy and excitement, it also gave them exactly nine months before their abundant free time drew to a close, and forced Darty to look inward and prepare for his world to change in the biggest way yet.
With an existential mindset and a hard deadline in mind, Darty felt motivated to find a way to keep creating. In doing so, he began searching for inspiration in different places, including a newfound reverence for Nine Inch Nails. While descending into the spiral of their discography, Darty was moved by Trent Reznor’s songwriting approach: Rather than his own process, which was rooted in, “What sick riff can we put here?” or “How can we get the maximum number of people to headbang?” Reznor seemed to be asking, “How am I feeling? What mood can I create so others feel it, too?” and building powerfully cinematic songs around a couple of root notes. Reflecting on bands he already loved, like Elder, Delving, Yawning Man, and others who intricately weave melodic guitar, bass, and synth into their heavy and emotionally powerful music, Darty came to the realization that he, too, could write and record music alone. He would just need to learn how to produce it himself and piece together each song one layer at a time.
Over the course of just six months leading up to the birth of his son, Darty not only taught himself to use Logic Pro and produce music entirely on his own, but he also revolutionized his approach to songwriting, allowing himself to process his existential musings on life’s beauty and unruliness through the creation of moody, multifaceted instrumental songs. In doing so, he also employed a more wisened, shimmering version of his signature guitar talents and pensive motifs of synthesizers as well as percussion by his longtime friend and bandmate Brett Whittingham. He aptly named the new project Musing, and compiled eight of these songs into its debut album, Somewhen.
The tone is immediately set on Somewhen’s opener, the nearly seven-minute post-rock opus “Who Awoke,” which features a recording of Darty’s son Elliot’s heartbeat in utero and serves as a chronicling of the musical re-awakening that took place surrounding the album’s creation. Similarly, the second track “Flight to Forever” is a slow-building, exquisitely tripped-out track inspired by the 1950s sci-fi novella of the same name by Poul Anderson (set in the distant future, 1973) about a physicist who test-drives a time machine and discovers he can only go forward in time and ends up riding it to the end of the universe. While many of Somewhen’s songs have a twinkling post-rock quality about them, the sole synth-based track “Ghosts of Extinct Constellations” concludes the record on a darker note, taking the listener on a dark path through space via a consistent, driving beat and an infectiously menacing bass line.
Ultimately, Somewhen captures exactly where Darty was at the time: standing on the precipice of fatherhood, learning to trust his own songwriting and production capability without a team of band members around him, with an isolating global pandemic hovering in the background. The end result is a deeply moving memento of great change: something every listener can relate to.
-words by Cat Jones
credits
released November 3, 2023
Recorded & Mixed by Kirill Telichev at Sound Priory in Calgary, Alberta
Mastered by Brock McFarlane at CPS Mastering in Vancouver, British Columbia
Musing is a moody, ambient, instrumental project from Calgary-based musician Devin “Darty” Purdy (Chron Goblin, Gone
Cosmic). Inspired by life’s simultaneous extremes of beauty and unruliness and written and recorded during a time of transformative life upheaval, the debut album Somewhen is an existential memento of growth and change....more
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