Surfer Dave
BIO
Surfer Dave started writing songs when he was 12 years old. Since then, he's released a prolific and consistent body of work, including many solo EPs, collaborative projects, and one-off tracks. Masterfully bouncing between genres, he's released lofi, ambient, and electronic music, including songs alongside rappers (like Pandaraps), singers (like Criibaby), and fellow beatmakers (like Somni, G Mills, Santpoort, and Joe Nora). Although he's released a great deal of music over the years, Thinking Will Get You Nowhere is Surfer Dave's debut solo album.
This LP is an open invitation to step outside of your endless cycles of daily thoughts and enter into a world of direct experience. These compositions accept the world as it is. In all its faults, its beauties, and its wonders. At times jazz, at times lofi, at times hip-hop driven, at times everything blended at once, this instrumental project encourages the listener to be gentler with oneself and one's inner worries, doubts, analytical thoughts. To press play is to simply breathe and be.
"Without supervision," says Surfer Dave, "your brain wants to think its way into a solution for everything, even grief, uncertainty, and loss, but those things can’t be fixed by contemplating them." Yes, it can be difficult to not be constantly lost in thought, losing attention while scrolling a phone or browsing a laptop, but this album asks the listener for one thing: to press play and do very little. Or, ideally, do nothing. Sit or lay down or close your eyes or go for a walk or stand in place. For 22 minutes, try to do nothing but listen. Can you do it? If so, what did you hear? How did you feel? What did you find?
Through nine organic instrumentals, with intimate piano, delicate percussion, ambient textures, and carefully constructed atmospheres, this album allows you to get comfortable and settle in fully into the present moment. A healing process from start to finish, this album can loosely be described as a guided meditation. An audible vision quest. A trip.
Thinking Will Get You Nowhere is an album full of songs that welcome love and hope while also showcasing tension and release, solitude and socialization, inner and outer peace. It highlights stillness, clearing one's mind, gentleness, and rest. Together, these instrumentals unfold and unravel, tracing the movement from internal turbulence toward a calming presence (and, most importantly, present).
The sound of the album is just as important as its philosophical message. A century-old upright grand piano sits at the heart of the record. "To capture the dreamy, nostalgic felted piano sound," says Surfer Dave, "I wrapped a piece of thick fabric around a wooden dowel and lowered it between the hammers and the strings. This not only mutes the piano to make it considerably warmer and quieter, it also allows the microphones to capture all of the quiet clicks and clacks of the piano’s internal machinery. The result is an intimate and deep sound, as if every note was played right next to your ear."
With the exception of a few drum samples, every sound on the album is acoustic and recorded in real spaces, embracing imperfect timing over precision. Incidental noises and humanistic touches are prioritized. Layers of field recordings (like campfires, birds, flowing water, soft wind, and "even the crinkling of little items in my studio") provide the personal backdrop of this album, creating a relaxing and immersive atmosphere both familiar and safe. Taking inspiration from artists like Antonio Carlos Jobim, Keith Jarrett, Knxwledge, Moonchild, and Tigran Hamasyan, this jazz-influenced LP is sure to resonate with fans of Kiefer, Aaron Parks, Bill Evans, SwuM, Elijah Fox, and Braxton Cook. It freely offers a deeply human listening experience that asks only one thing of the listener: let go of thought for a while and arrive right here. Right where you are. Right now.
DISCOGRAPHY
