Shortwave Dahlia dot org

I’ve learned over the years that, if you don’t hear the music you want to hear, you must make it yourself. Inevitably, when you explain that you’re doing this because everything else you hear fails to satisfy, people will brand you an asshole. Especially when the things you hate are the things they gourmandize.There are a lot of artists who make music that I love. My life has been forever changed by the songs and words written by the likes of Martin Gore, Robert Smith, Ian Curtis…the list goes on for quite a long time, actually and includes some very common and popular names as well. Inevitably, though, Shortwave Dahlia exists in part because I decided a lot of popular music is unadventurous and trite. It exists because there are tons of people who merely accept what they hear on the radio as the only music that matters. I want to give these people another choice.

It exists to speak for and to the anxious and the awkward as well, because I am among them.

Shortwave Dahlia exists in the here and now as a trio because I got to a point where I did not want to go it alone. I’m a big believer in musical expression-as-brotherhood (or sisterhood, I’m flexible!), and I think this sort of expression means even more when it is in tandem with others. Mark Simmonds and Ethan Grim bring something into the equation that I cannot summon alone. The feeling of achievement one gets from making a song in a group, that wonder when you finish a spirited performance, it’s very fulfilling.

The record we are working on, we’ve decided, is to be called Keeping the One. It’s a Taoist concept involving the process of bringing balance to the self, and a lot of the music and thoughts we’ve been exploring lately have to do in one way or another with that very idea. Being in the middle of this adventure ourselves, there’s no way to know how things are going to turn out.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy it when it’s all said and done.

Best wishes,
Jack Alberson