I’m almost totally focusing my efforts on new solo material, but in the meantime you might be interested in discovering these amazing and 100% indie efforts of by various friends and acquaintances. Let’s take a look-see!

The new EP by Astro Kid offers some surprising developments, notably lyrics (and not just ghost-or-mini-bottle-related ones) and is host to his most fully-realized tracks yet. “Dive” throws a curveball with its rock-oriented vibe, serving as a prelude to the very trance centerpiece “TransPacific” followed by a variety of remixes. Add some collaborations and remixes from hrmnzr and Solatrus and you’ve got a very cool effort, my friend!

Speaking of Solatrus, he’s been a big part of the development process for the upcoming exploration game Starbound and has made a handful of his contributions to its soundtrack available to stream on Bandcamp. If you pre-order now, you can get the full album in December, just in time for the game’s release.

Finally, I recommend strongly you check out Kasko Lunsford, the folk-flavored project of Scott Stutzman. His latest EP, Through These Piney Woods, is the soulful opus of one man’s struggle against the universe armed with nothing but a ukulele.

Bowman here - I’ve got some new material brewing and it’s pretty clear I’m about to submerge into it headfirst. I don’t want to spoil what’s going down on my end, but let’s just say it’ll be almost nothing like Ithaca or Comfortable Bugs. It’s definitely not a rush effort, so don’t hold your breath - relax, focus, and let the air fill your lungs. There you go.

Things you can do in the meantime:

• Use your imagination
• Listen to music and space out
• Practice smiling in a mirror

For just about a year now, Kayla Reckon, a film student from Ventura has been hightailing it around the country to create a documentary about the oddball fan community that has evolved around Homestuck. She’s been to over a dozen different conventions in the course of a year interviewing costumed folk for the film, currently titled The Family We Make, and even touched based with author Andrew Hussie.

I answered a few questions about my contribution to the project in an interview over Skype earlier this year. The video above is a preview of some of the interviews she made with the musicians on the project including myself, Seth Peele, Toby Fox, Clark Powell, and Erik Scheele. A longer featurette will be available soon.

“Light of Apollo” on Soundcloud. From the album Comfortable Bugs.

A little cinder of psychedelia. Between “This Sunset” and a few other song drafts in my file, I’ve got a lot of tracks about sunsets and the mix of emotions they evoke. They’re spooky phenomena and the weirdest part is that not only do they happen every single day, but in many ways they define what a single day actually is.

This is one of those story songs told from a few perspectives of different people witnessing the same sun from different places in the world. That kind of patchwork point of view is a narrative element for which I am very fond - the same synchronicity was the big basis for “Dawn of Man” two albums earlier.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this further breakdown of Comfortable Bugs. I know I sure have, but I’m crazy and self-absorbed. It’s the only way to get things done.

Comfortable Bugs is available on Bandcamp.

“Roll With The Punches” on Soundcloud - from the album Comfortable Bugs.

More dramatics. Mellow piano with big, crashing drums and plinky, weirdo synths. This is very much a “me” song, and not just in its lyrics. Overall just a good example of what happens when I let go of the formulas and just try every sound in the computer. I even whipped out the Oblique Strategies and of course in the end it all sounds like Brian Eno.

Probably the most inventive track on here - especially that ending. I would have enjoyed making that thing go on and on and on if I had a little extra time, but I didn’t want to follow up “Every Time” with something even more drawn out.

This is definitely the height of the mellowness. It just swallows the record whole, taking all that fire in the first act and chewing it up. It’s that Our Town flow - an impatient start, a dramatic middle, and a ghostly ending. Leaves a great aftertaste.

Comfortable Bugs is available on Bandcamp.