Searching by Tristan de Liège

This is an album I've been trying to make for 10 years, but I didn't know how I would do it or what exactly it would be like. I only had a relatively vague vision of making an album that featured many different brilliant musicians and crossed many different genres, but tied it all together with a unique and personal approach that made the songs feel cohesive. Moreover, I wanted to create an emotional arc in an album that gave a sense of an exploratory journey, through the highs and lows that we experience in life. I also wanted to capture the vibrance and life-affirming nature of searching for one's inner voice and identity, not just as an artist but as a person.

This is a journey I've been on for the last 10 years and it's resulted in this album, which is incidentally my 10th solo album. I have so much gratitude for the musicians and collaborators who I have met along the way during this journey, which is of course still ongoing - my search for my inner voice is not nearly finished. Many of them, whom I consider mentors, confidants, and/or inspirations are featured on this album, and I will always treasure that.

When I first began making music again during my early 20s, after a brief break in college, I was using sampling (of both myself playing different instruments) and records to collage together tracks inspired of different genres and styles in different world musics, jazz, soul, etc. I quickly realized the limitations of my own compositional knowledge however and the sonic limitations of sampling bothered me, so I became increasingly interested in writing out parts and including other musicians in the process. As I did this more and more, I found increasing joy in the process of collaborating with others on tracks I was working on, finding that improvising together over track ideas with my musical friends created unique musical conversations that often could not have been anticipated in advance. I realized that this was a path towards creating a new sound and at the same time, reflecting my own personal journey and voice since I was working with my favorite musicians and people whose sounds had inspired and influenced my own.

In the end, I think music is both an intensely personal experience - one of relating to one's own inner emotional world and experiencing emotions directly, as if imaginary stories or narratives were playing out in one's mind. But the practice of making and sharing music is intensely social and conversational, and I think this album reflects for me this duality of my experience of making music: both an intensely personal statement of my emotional experience during the last few years of working on it, and a diary of my social interactions and meetings with the amazing musicians that I've been able to work with on this album.

I hope that this album inspires you and gives you rejuvenation on your own journey in searching for your self and your inner voice.

x
Tristan

Tristan de Liège began his exploration of music in high school, first playing in bands and eventually exploring electronic music. His sound is inspired by instrumental hiphop and downtempo artists and also his love of film soundtracks and orchestral arrangements.

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