Hey, thanks for listening to my album, and also thanks for reading this! Creating songs like this and sharing them is super new for me. These are, more or less, the first ones I’m putting out in the world. So, feel free to be impressed or understandingly compassionate accordingly. What’s much more comfortable for me is the world of ambient sounds, like the ones you hear in “roil” and “thrum”. I wanted to find a way to put the two different sound-making practices together.

I called the album “Care” for a few reasons. One, because I think my work is at its best when it’s being used to relax, and two, because I think most of us could stand to care a little more. We could certainly all stand to be cared for more.

I’ll be honest, I got stuck when I was writing these songs. I started pretty quickly, had almost everything done in about a month, and then got very stuck for a lot of months. What helped me finish them wasn’t my own self-care progress, though that was important. The real inspiration came more from wanting to take care of a friend who was stuck in survival mode. I’ve been stuck there so often and for so long myself. When I see it in others, I want so badly to help. To be able to grab them, shake them, and tell them to take a real, honest-to-goodness break like I wish I had. This is all to say, the words I wanted to say to my friend, to invite them to rest deeply enough to find a way out of that cycle, those thoughts and feelings were the momentum and focus I needed to finish these songs.

I also think it’s important that you know that it was really fun putting this album together. Alex Gray and cmntx were really lovely to work with at every step of the process, and getting to hang out with Alex as we worked on recording and mixing really made me feel I’d be perfectly happy to be making albums all the time if this was what it was like every time. Certainly, it made me realize I’m at a point in my life where the easiest way to hang out with friends is by making something together. Going forward, I’m planning on making a lot more things. 

–Zachary James Ritter