My earliest work within the music scene was covering bands belonging to close friends through my first years in university. With time, I drifted away from this calling, but eventually rediscovered this love for live music upon moving to the San Francisco Bay Area--in the summer of 2020. I spent countless hours of my free time listening to and supporting artists online however I could until the day I could see them in person again.
As venues slowly reopened following the lockdowns, I felt a resurgence of energy growing within myself that needed an avenue of escape. I had to be in the middle of a circle pit, the vibrant rays of the stage lights filtering through my closed eyes, sound piercing my flesh, masses carrying me above and beyond the stage. This is my kind of ritual madness.
This project amplifies the color and energy I feel when immersed among these artists and the claustrophobic crowds of their devoted followers where the sweat and deafening liturgy is inescapable. My hope is to develop this into more than just a book, and to convert others into this blackened mass of sonic ecstasy.