Upset Cassette (2025) is the first full length musical release by Upset Cassette. This is the story behind the album.

Background

As a 15 year old making music, I was having fun and exploring. It was more of a primal experience and I was less able to really perceptually comprehend my art.. As time progressed and the opinions of others got involved, the music became more contrived. The reasons for writing songs became less about expression and more about the masturbatory act of recording things and making BIG sounds. I took on a production role for other people instead, capitalizing on my skills, ruining the fun, and thus losing the ability to transmute life's painful & beautiful experiences into art. I got lost in the sauce.

It had been 12 or 14 years since I had even tried to write a song. To assist myself in trying not to think about alcohol every five seconds, I brought a few pieces of recording equipment from my storage unit up into my apartment. I made it a goal to create and record the songs as quickly as possible without overthinking anything. The first songs I wrote were Is Be, Cage Yourselves In The Zoo, and Desert Hope Hotel. 

"Upset Cassette" was written and recorded over a 2.5 year span of time, recorded in a small apartment room and then in a house. I kept things as real and raw as possible. I played all of the instruments. Several instruments were built for use on the record. Most of the 2.5 years was spent working on other things and building a life.

Here are the stories and influences behind each song.

Monkey Suit

Monkey Suit was written towards the end of the album, it is a conclusory piece about going through life's philosophical struggles, finding meaning/purpose, and the acceptance that life is both beautiful and sad simultaneously. I chose it as the first song as a tool of foreshadowing my journey from a nihilistic piece of shit to an abstract piece of cassette tape on a canvas.

Cage Yourselves In The Zoo

A song about society, terrible depression, alcoholism, and the feeling that the negative aspect/expression of capitalism is spreading from mind to mind, zombifying the masses and creating a generation of apathetic porn consumers and creators. This feeling becomes more obvious when you watch people on Segways take a guided tour of a downtown area as homeless people lie out on the sidewalk passed out on drugs like beached whales in the sun. It sure does feel like nobody likes you when you aren't chippy and cheery about society's current iteration of reality.

Thalassophobia

After having an extended and lonely stay in a seaside city along the Pacific coast, Upset Cassette finds himself back in the land of the lost, looking for love in all the wrong places. A nautically themed love story ensues about a whiskey drinking land king and a beautiful shapeshifting mermaid creature who follows him home out of the sea. 

Desert Hope Hotel

Seeking help to detox from alcohol, Upset Cassette finds himself experience a traumatizing trip to hell inside of a rehab facility. The experience was an infinite time loop in a hallway. Trying to escape the time loop by choosing different pathways each time the loop occurred ended with a visit to the emergency room leaving the question of quantum immortality as a possible reality forever burned into his mind. 

The Birthing Song

Continuing the question of Quantum Immortality and experiencing the paranoia of current events, we find the hypothetical scenario of "What happens to your consciousness after a nuclear war?" Do you find the love of your life again in a timeline far removed from this one? 

Rebel Anthem

Trying to save money as life starts over, Upset Cassette and his lady move into an apartment on a busy street corner in the middle of a bustling city. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for an entire year, the same four chords repeated inside and outside the "Rebel" gas station just six lanes away. Rebel Anthem is a song about the experiences at the intersection: witnessing an attempted stabbing at the bus stop from the apartment window, domestic violence in the street, listening to people smoke crystal meth outside the apartment door, and almost becoming a robbery (or worse) victim.

My Eyes x3

During the horrifying experience of alcohol addiction, the intensity knob was turned up on life. Some of those intensities have remained accessible at any time. This is a song about the feeling of looking into your lover's eyes and finding your internal emotional reaction to be completely overwhelming.
English-divergent language key: Zorp = A Telepathic Communication Emanating From Within One's Skull

Say Jump

The final song I wrote for the album. Laying on my back with a newly purchased guitar, I began to play the intro line. "Uh oh, this is going to turn into a song I bet." This song is about the level of devotion to my parter which I have represented comically and somewhat darkly including flying to the moon on skis, jumping over bullets for her enjoyment, and facing the ultimate human death of floating into the dark and lonely abyss of space.. and only asking that she reach her hand out to me and say "yes" .. a very dramatic way to perhaps make sure she's on board for marriage. ;-)

Tongue & Groove

A song about examining various dysfunctional relationships from my past plus the abuse of alcohol and recognition of this tactic in order to dissociate to see the self and situations differently. Ultimately, this tactic doesn't work out if you almost die. Last verse: a promise to not repeat past mistakes.

PCH City Sad Boy's Club

In an attempt to escape my hometown, I took myself and all of my problems to a seaside city. I didn't make a single friend. I wonder why? This song precedes Thalassophobia in life experience, but was written long after.

Disclosure

Conspiracy theories about the government, the all-seeing-eye on our money, the defense contractor budget, aliens, and an abduction sequence sang in the style of a maybe real life egotistical 80's pop crooner. 

P3T HUM4N

Exploring the idea of human beings that may have been abducted but not returned home. Would you exist in their ship on display like a zoo animal? Would they plug you into a "matrix" to keep you calm? Are you in that matrix right now? This unhealthy relationship between human and captor mirrors emotional experiences that are less alien. The insidious feeling of this song was definitely crafted on purpose. Have a new planet, you'll have a new hollow moon.

Is Be

Of the first songs I wrote post-musical-hiatus. A post rehab examination of the self inspired by an apparent story told by an alien from Roswell. Look it up on youtube.