STREAM & DOWNLOAD: https://go.meaningwave.com/THEHIGHWATERMARK
MERCH: https://www.meaningwave.com/pages/search-results-page?q=THE%20HIGH%20WATERMARK
VINYL: https://www.meaningwave.com/collections/vinyl
One cool thing about being this deep into Meaningwave - 100 albums and 534 tracks and counting - is that people will regularly ask me to make things that already exist. Like this message, that was left on an Insta post yesterday (https://www.instagram.com/p/CzHguGiR441/) that featured an illustration I’d done of Hunter S Thompson.
I actually did a short HSTWAVE mix 5 years ago (https://linktw.in/KcPHTK), back at the dawn of the Meaningwave experiment, and people have been asking me to get it on DSPs ever since. Well, we are coming to close of this most auspicious year of our lord, 2023 AD, and I have finally made a space in the relentless glory of the Meaningwave release schedule, and lo, the first song from that mix, The High Watermark (https://go.meaningwave.com/THEHIGHWATERMARK), based around one of the most shimmering of moments in that collection of nothing but shimmering moments that is Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, which I read aged seventeen, and that changed my life immediately, and powerfully, for good and ill…
THE HIGH WATERMARK is out now on all platforms!
(https://go.meaningwave.com/THEHIGHWATERMARK)
In other Meaningwave news! I just finished work on that most beloved of traditions, the annual ATD Christmas album! The release date will be announced as soon as it is back from mastering!
Upon finishing that, I went straight back to work on MEDITATIONS VOL. II, which is in the final stages of creation. I am very excited and awash with joy to be able to report that Pete Parada, formerly of The Offspring and now of The Defiant, has contributed drums to a number of songs on the project…
AND
THEY
ARE
NAPALM!
Speaking of Pete, and The Defiant, they just released their debut LP. IF WE'RE REALLY BEING HONEST is that other most rare and mythical of things, AN ACTUAL ALBUM that TELLS A STORY and takes the listener on a JOURNEY....
It brought to mind flashes of tons of immortal music I love, The Clash, The Jam, Sham 69, Pogues, Squeeze, and contains a gang of instant classics that are gonna require extended versions for people to bellow along to at live shows. Check it out here!
(http://fanlink.to/TheDefiantAlbum)
OK! I shall return to mixing MEDITATIONS II. It is the greatest thing I have yet to be anywhere close to, and I am very excited to hear what it sounds like when it’s finished. You are gonna love it, dear reader, by Jove, you really are…
BLESSINGS TO THEE AND THINE!
AKIRA THE DON
Don Studios Playa Del Carmen MK II, November 2023
ELSEWHERE IN THE MU!
ALBUM: Akira The Don x Ayn Rand - ANTHEM | EP
(https://akirathedon.substack.com/p/akira-the-don-x-ayn-rand-anthem-ep)
MUSIC VIDEO: Akira The Don & Elon Musk - ALIEN
(https://linktw.in/JWxrGL)
MIXTAPE: HOPECORE MUSIC VOL. 3
(https://linktw.in/XafrhZ)
PODCAST: Shaun Newman Podcast ft. Akira The Don
(https://twitter.com/SNewmanPodcast/status/1720017857818628602)
Timelapse of me drawing my new avatar
Tools: Procreate on iPad with Apple Pencil
Own the NFT at https://opensea.io/akirathedon !
BACK WITH ANOTHER BANGER FROM BERTON AND THE DON!
TELL THEM NOW!
With lyrics adapted from Berton Braley's poem of 100 years hence!
STREAM https://go.meaningwave.com/TELLTHEMNOW
Art by me!
Own the NFT! https://opensea.io/akirathedon
I worked in a bunch of factories when I was 16/17, after I'd left home.
Sauce factory. Cardboard box factory. Car door handle factory.
The former was the hardest because I was working in the freezers, packing bags of sauce for 12-hour shifts with nothing but local commercial radio and the speed-addled ramblings of my co-workers to entertain me.
The cardboard box factory was the most fun because I got to slide down this three-storey chute into a skip full of cardboard and jump up and down in it to squash the cardboard down. I'd always leave the place shredded with paper-cuts, but that made me feel like a warrior.
The car door handle factory was the worst because it was the most boring - literally just picking a spring out of a greasy bucket and jamming it into a wedge of plastic then passing it to the old lady to my right, for 12 hours, in a giant air-hangar looking-ass hall with a great big clock looming over us, that ticked with all the lugubrious lurching urgency of a ketamine zombie outside a ...
“Why shouldn’t the soul of a mortal be proud?
Life goes, it is true, like a swift-flying cloud
But while it's still going before he has died
A man may do many things worthy of pride”
With lyrics adapted from Berton Braley’s poem of the same name, MEANINGWAVE is proud to present a new single…
WHY NOT
(https://go.meaningwave.com/WHYNOT)
Why Not? (https://go.meaningwave.com/WHYNOT) is but one of hundreds of poems written by the perennial zone inhibitor and Appreciator Of The Wonder Of Being, and published in magazines and newspapers between the 1910s and 1940s. It is classic Braley, an anthem for the glory of man and all his achievements, past, and yet to come. And now you can sing it.
Oh, and that cover art there? That’s a picture of me back in ‘91 when I was around 11, which is my son’s age.
WHY NOT (https://go.meaningwave.com/WHYNOT) is out now. Download (https://akirathedon.bandcamp.com/album/why-not) or stream on your platform of choice now ...
Been in the studio since 4am, guess what album I’m working on?
I shall be sticking to this new schedule ‘till the album’s done, at least, and then we’ll see. Heck, maybe I’ll like it. I liked it today, I gotta say. There’s something magical about going to the studio in the dark, getting an amazing new song mixed while most people are still sleeping, then stepping back outside to find the sun rising. Oh! What a glorious thing!
(https://go.meaningwave.com/OhWhatAGloriousThing)
I worked till 10:30, then cracked open a White Monster - another experiment - and walked down to the gym in the blazing Mexican sunshine. Jamie was leading a Crossfit class, and happy to see me as ever, and I was happy to find the entire squat/bench area unoccupied, and got some work in on my lifting. I don’t know if it was the early start, or the new song, or the White Monster, but despite having been away from the gym for ten days due to a cold that I had no desire to disseminate, I was able to lift slightly heavier ...
