I wrote this driving home from the grammys in February 2023 and stopped along the central california coast for a day break. During low tide, I walked pretty far out, where the riptides can easily kill you if your not careful; captivated by the beauty of earth. my first instinct was to hum a melody (the piano riff) into my phone. As I heard the powerful waves crash and the tide rising, i reminded myself of the imminent danger I could be in and headed back to shore. On the way back I drew the parallel of the powerful ocean waves that can easily destroy the strongest human, to the ugly often anger driven and algorithm fed hatred we see in my country every election cycle.


The words are a plea to people to think for themselves, and not allow automated content curation cloud their judgement, create fear, create anger, and ultimately create physical conflicts in the form of mass shootings, hate crimes, and the like. I hope the message gets heard.


After laying down the song concept,
i reached out to some friends to help me finish the music. But i composed the entire piece myself, the guys gave it a nice polished finish tho for sure.


Alex Brinkman - cello
Dane Zone - drums
Brandon Meeks - bass
Benjamin Tierney - engineering
piano, vocals, words, composition - me.


After the instrumental was finished and the main record was recorded, i remixed them using my sampler into the tracks called “Free” and “Alignment”