Release Notes: I Wonder (2026)

So, I Wonder … is the title of my new record with close friend, electronics mentor, and one of my all time favourite people, Nick Henderson.

This record signals the continuation of my journey of original music without the trumpet, as well as the continued expansion of my ambient and electronic practice, this time in collaboration with great friend Nick Henderson, and his stunning synth and guitar playing. 

Nick and I share a musical history dating back 13 years to our jazz performance degree at the Sydney Conservatorium together. Since then we have been close friends and musical collaborators, with Henderson co-producing and mixing the SOFT SPOT album, and I playing on multiple recordings of Henderson’s Little Clouds project including a cute impromptu live session from COVID times.

Further, we have long had a shared love of emotive ambient music. Over the years we have swapped many a link including the likes of Jon Hopkins, Tim Hecker, Ben Frost and Julianna Barwick - all who have inspired this latest release in one way or another.

For those that don’t know Nick, he’s a bit of a music polymath: a jazz bassist, a banjo player, a recording and mixing engineer, an electronic producer (releases his own ambient music quietly under the moniker 50 Cycles), a singer-songwriter, a prolific composer. He’s one of the most naturally musical people I know.  

Nick has also been a generous mentor for me across the years as I’ve delved deeper int othe world of electronics, dating back to when I first started getting serious about Ableton in 2016. Across 2024, as I began delving deeper into my electronic setup and messing around with pedals, he enthusiastically fielded my many questions and suggested we have some jams with my new music toys in his studio, where he was able to record it all.

At the end of the year we ended up with five hours of recorded material across four jams. I listened back to it all, flagged the best moments and edited them into the tracks you hear. As I’ve said on previous release notes, I love the editing process; it’s my favourite part of making albums. I think it’s due to the fact you’re constrained by the material already recorded, yet are still able to make creative decisions. It minimises the overwhelming feeling of endless options I’m sometimes caught by when creating music from scratch. 

Speaking of editing, this record has been a fully DIY project: As well as recording it in his studio and editing it in mine, Hendo and I mixed it together, and he mastered it. I did the art. Doing everything in-house is something I’m becoming more interested in as the economic of making an album (studio and engineer ($800+/day), mixing engineer ($500+), mastering ($600-900), graphic design (+/- $500) etc.) become financially unsustainable for each project.

Sonically, the album fuses our two approaches - mine being steeped in found sounds and field recordings formed into loops that both evolve and disintegrate, while Hendo utilises an array of synths and guitars with stunning harmonic choices. Each track is from a different play and so features different instrumentation and set ups, which brings a sense of variety to the record. I think on the first tune I’m playing rhodes, then on the others ableton and pedals as well as some piano throughout. Hendo plays mostly an assortment of synths and guitars throughout the tracks, with various effects.

We decided to call the album  ‘I Wonder’ initially due to the fact that track 1 strongly evoked a sense of outer space for me. It’s really rare that my own music evokes such a tangible scene and so I was keen to lean into that. I’ve leaned into it so much so that I actually made a video that pairs the track with creative commons footage of space from the European Space Agency, which feels borderline cliche but also truly scratches that itch for me.

Once we came up with the album title, we naturally fell into the idea of first-person verbs that reflected similar states, for each track - I Wonder, I Sit, I Rejoice, I Dissolve, and I Reveal. What I realised after we titled the songs was that they all related to both Hendo’s and my joint interest in meditation and contemplative practice. From that moment in felt glaringly obvious this record was really about all things contemplative, awe-provoking, ineffable and grand. Moreover, how contemplative practice and big questions increasingly feel at odds with our modern lives where attention is increasingly commodified, stretched and fragmented. My hope is that listening to this record can draw you into a state of contemplation and awe for the grandness of all things, both big and small.

Best,
Nick
July 2026