downers

Downers is a short compilation EP that came out of the tail end of a period where the work was not really being thought of in terms of releases yet, but more as separate tracks. Later in 2024 and after that, the workflow became much more clearly organized around releases. The tracks on Downers were not originally made with the idea that they would end up together in this form, but at some point it made sense to gather them anyway.

The release is very short, and the same is true of the individual tracks. Even so, they do not feel sketch-like to me. They could have been stretched into longer pieces, or the release could have been filled out with more material from the same period, but in retrospect it feels right that this did not happen. Downers works better for being direct. It says what it needs to say and then stops.

That also connects to an approach that still remains important in the project now: repetition usually does not add much unless it really earns its place. A lot of the structure here comes from clear, full shifts between sections rather than from pop-style repetition. The different parts often have enough identity that they could have been stretched into separate pieces, but within the tracks they still connect naturally and do not feel abrupt.

In that sense, Downers already shows one of the structural ideas that became more central later on in DSC_0001. Earlier work also avoided pop structure, but usually less clearly than this. A lot of later releases would work more strongly with these kinds of total shifts between sections, where a track moves from one distinct state into another rather than circling around a chorus or repeated central passage.

At the same time, Downers is probably better understood as a sample of that phase than as a tightly unified release with one fixed identity of its own. That is part of why it feels broader and more diverse than Uppers, even though the two clearly belong to the same period and the same general sound world. Downers sets more of the ground, while Uppers goes deeper and becomes more concentrated.

Nothing is the clearest exception on the release. It depends much more directly on a classic pop structure than almost anything else in the discography, and is probably the closest thing to a true verse/chorus track anywhere in the project. That makes it unusual not only within Downers, but within DSC_0001 more broadly.

The title Downers does not really describe the music in any strict way. It is not necessarily darker or slower than Uppers. At the time the title simply felt fitting for that phase, and it also looked right typographically.

Text written in May 2026.