vimeo.com/494828071

once upon a time there was a glorious genius artist and thinker named Sarah Goldfarb and she was like my sister my mirror (though she never once made me sick) and we became artistic partners too and shared a band called Red Widow (redwidow.bandcamp.com, fb RedWidow-Music, ig redwidowtunes) that she’d just begun with some magical songs and expanded into a quartet. then a terrible accident happened and took her away from me and all her loving friends and collaborators. a year later now the loss is unfathomable—but at least we got to create some songs together, two i’m incredibly happy to share in her honor today.

the first came from a particularly moody day of ours, jamming with the boys, sarah programmed a brutal beat and a mantra of “my mirror makes me sick” came to me instantly. the initial jam was something like no-wave, the version i came up with Sarah lovingly said “the beatles meet with death grips”, and immediately began sending the lyrics back and forth with me. she loved this tune, we played it live more than a few times—but she was never satisfied with her bass part, thought it crowded everything, and we never got to try recording the planned RW single, so i’ve released it as a mastered demo, with our co-written lyrics, in her beautiful memory.

the second came between singles, Sarah had been digging up wonderful instrumentals of hers from the winter previous, out of which I immediately fell in love with Stranger (I am sure the other RWers are mixing up the original for release imminently, so look out for that too). Sarah and i sent back the .wav a few times, extended the bridge, I did an interpretive vocal take with lyrics inspired by the arrangement that she quite loved—but we could never fix a certain skip. after some arduous work, i’ve presented a repaired remix that i’m certain she’d love to hear now.

sarah, i don’t know if you can hear any of this. it would be fitting for the inventor of spook-pop to be a ghost, though. so here goes: i love you dearly, i miss you every day. never have i felt so much like someone was family, like a friend was born on the same distant planet i was. the absence of your artistic brilliance, your profuse kindness and understanding, your ineffable charm, your powerful presence which enchanted without fail every single person i had the pleasure of introducing you to; it’s been by far my most painful personal loss in years defined by them. every step i take i feel the shackles of your missing soul around my feet; and every pathway i take feels further from the artistic and social life we once shared. sometimes i feel i have strayed on purpose because i have been so lost without you. to quote our favorite precocious brit, my heart’s go’ no more—the woun’s on my back are still sore. i’m not sure there’s anybody out there; i don’t think i’ve felt so alienated from all our loved ones. still, i know, if by some beautiful miracle you were here today, you would stand with me, through any darkness, urging me to continue, to live, to express this glittering feral soul. so here i am, lordess, back to releasing music, starting with some of our prized outtakes, with hopefully a lot more to come—so long as your towering wondrous ghost compels me on, so long as every memory of our wonderful friendship and artistic partnership courses through my mind. how i wish i could freeze every second and live them again. i suppose that’s why we made sure to record some of these

also included is a live video of Sarah and I in one of our budding side-projects during her last few months, NONEWYORK, a sort-of-accidentally-prophetically apocalyptic set of scuzzy punk by various beloved NYC noise rock bands that explodes throughout our manual mashup (we had an amazing new one planned with Bauhaus and Peggy Lee—oh,to dream). it was one of our finest moments together, and it was lucky enough to be captured (in now remastered, re-connected the clips). to truly honor the memory of Sarah one must see her inimitable swaying bass in movement [link above]

thank you to Yöri and Lily for the cover design, to Keenan and Doc and Rachel for urging me to release these, to Zak at GunkTVRecords for distributing them, to Chris G for filming the DRTY SMMR shenanigans, to Zoe for being the one person to really talk to me about this, and most of all, to Sarah; one of the greatest people to ever live, gone senselessly in a world of entropy, immortal in every remembered fiber of her being and person. i hope i can continue to make music even half as brilliant as the lordess I did serve—and am forever grateful for having been blessed to know for as long as i did. love you forever, liege.