pale sunbathers by .paperman

I wrote this album while I was working at a clinic in Germany's Black Forest for three months during the hot summer of 2018.

I spent a Teutonic Fourth of July with friends playing games and wading into the shallow water of a beach along the Rhine.The water was cold and clear and every step kicked up a layer of silt and black algae which clouded the surface. On the grassy shore, a small wedding was starting. A radio played soft music for the ceremony and Swiss leisure boats sailed in the distance, gently raising and lowering my shorts against my legs in the wake. More than a dozen pale sunbathers were on the shore.

Every song on pale sunbathers is related to a part of my journey in Germany in which I grew and matured immensely. I've never felt more stress than in these three months, yet being half a world away from the relationships which had troubled me for so long was relieving.

This album explores and expresses the complicated feelings I have about my time in the Black Forest. Every song was written while I was in Germany and then the production and order of the tracks was finalized back home in California, this gives the narrative a special hindsight and allowed me to structure the tracks so that they didn't necessarily re-tell the literal chronology of my experiences, but rather the mental narrative and the story which I wish to remember the events through.

The track listing begins with several songs capturing the desire I had to leave and the relief I felt in escaping from an emotionally crushing social environment at home in which I felt trapped. Blended with these complex early emotions was the immediate isolation and realization of the difficulties of my new situation. Then, the album moves towards an acceptance of how powerless I was both at home and in my current state, morphing into escapism, dreams, wanderlust, and the ever-shifting incongruities of feeling trapped in a universe where, through a small change in perspective, a small bag can become an infinite space. Finally, the album ends with stories and re-evaluations of myself as a communicator. The beginning of a story from my friend Wavey, whom I wouldn't want to imagine having been without that summer. A song about becoming comfortably silent and confident as others talk around you. And a song with a melody from a child whom I worked with at the clinic in Germany.

It was important to me that this collection of compositions never resolves, because the problems I had before my journey followed me thousands of miles and there wasn't a magical escape. When I returned home I realized that new problems had come with me, but my perspective had changed and continues to change as I slowly, and with earnestness, try to understand my life.

I've carried these songs for a long time. This is the most intimate and personal release I've ever made. Many of the sounds were sampled from my environment in Germany, brief journeys to small villages, and long hours laying on strange grasses in the heat of a summer sun in the Black Forest.

Bryant Keith Bayhan - Glitter wave screensaver.

iamthepaperman@gmail.com

Instagram
SoundCloud