Recorded in one take at Mothership Studios in San Francisco, these sessions reflect an ongoing experiment of approaching composing as a conversation, done on the fly and in the moment utilizing, ideally, a balance of listening and speaking with sound. With no preconceived idea of what the songs would be about or even sound like, the results are like reading entries from a forgotten journal: emotional, personal and searching.

Huge thank you to Daniel Bozella for his kind and expert handling of the music throughout the entire process. Bozella is a recording engineer, musician and composer currently based in the bay area. He has a love of anything experimental and that can be captured naturally in the physical world. His productions have been featured on KEXP, XLR8R, KQED, Apple TV and in the sports highlights of English Football League channel 5 in the U.K.

Arrangement, Instrumentation, Vocals - Kaitlin McSweeney

Recording, Mixing, Mastering - Daniel Bozella

Mothership Studios, San Francisco, 2023.

Drawing inspiration from David Lynch films, sci-fi soundtracks, angst driven darkwave and transcendent symphonic composition, Conclusions From Youth is a desire-drunk tightrope walk of dissatisfaction and euphoria cloaked in late city nights, percolated by moments of glow: a neon sign, a halogen streetlamp, a glimpse of stars between the fog drifts. Kevin Balcora and Kaitlin McSweeney employ digital synthesizers, cello, piano and a broad spectrum of sampled audio, from field recordings to pieces of classical orchestral works, as they reflect on growing up in the Bay Area through the turn of the millennium. From the desperate, chant-like cry for a sense of security in “Safe” to the sleep spoken plea for everything to pause in “Stay”, Conclusions From Youth is an archive of yearning in a time and place of rapid and ceaseless change.

Arrangement, Instrumentation, Mixing, Production - Kevin Balcora

Arrangement, Instrumentation, Vocals, Lyrics - Kaitlin McSweeney

Cartoon Messenger was created in 2014 post break-up in a house full of roommates during a general untangling of what happened, what is true now and what to do next. Kaitlin McSweeney offers up raw pieces of her journaling from this time, written in vocal harmonies that echo her teenage years singing Palestrina and Bach in various choirs, layered with torn and turned samples of both created and found sounds. The result is a collection of romantic melodies scraped with a roughness gathered from the inevitable falls of growing up and learning that many dreams can’t grow legs.

McSweeney is joined by the electronic wizardry of Andy Maag (Psychic Friends Network, Velcronik) on Alarms and Airplanes and the vocal harmonies and whistling of Japhy Riddle (Frozen Folk) on Call Me.

Arrangement, instrumentation, vocals, lyrics, mixing, production - Kaitlin McSweeney

Image by Riki Feldmann