Of Dust and Physics...
If you are just joining us, welcome. I’ve been sending out this newsletter once a week for the last few months, as I get ready to transition out of my full-time job at KEXP as the host of Early and the Associate Music Director, and back into life as a person who gets enough sleep, and navigates the world as an independent musician, writer, educator… and person who’s just hard to put in one box.
Being an independent artist for as long as I have has taught me there’s no limit to what any of us are capable of, other than the limits we place on ourselves. If people are able to understand it? That might be another story… but I’m thankful for y’all being here.
I’ve got a new song out today, and it’s one of the earliest pieces for this album I started making back in 2020, in the months before the world changed overnight. The original idea for this project was a story based in Ethiopian music, and it was a collaborative effort with a producer I’ve worked with for a long time. A majority of that album was made and then scrapped due to events that transpired throughout the course of 2020. Some of it was things we all experienced together, like the pandemic. Others were more personal. Friendships were lost. Our literal house went up in flames. And if that wasn’t enough, a war popped off in Ethiopia that has forever altered my idea of home.
The next few singles I’m releasing touch on the effects of that conflict in different ways.
This one is about how cycles of violence are felt and play out across different continents and generations, and this is also a collaboration with Tigrayan poet BeeLyn Naihiwet, who’s voice you will hear over three songs on the full-length album. I’m very thankful to her for giving the entire project a perspective it needed to feel complete. You can order a copy of BeeLyn’s book and learn more about her work at naihiwet.com
And if you are just joining us, the album is called From the Ashes of Our Homes. There’s another album by Khingz entitled A Safe Place For Us being released on the same day, September 23rd. The two albums are connected, and we juuust so happen to be releasing them on the 20 year anniversary of OutKast’s Speakerboxxx / The Love Below, itself an inspiration to what we can do as a duo. Since the first week of August, we’ve released a song every week leading up to the album launch in September. There’s a few videos as well, and it’s all on the archives you can check at gabrielteodros.substack.com
On 8/23, we’ll be celebrating the release of these albums in Seattle at the Clock-Out Lounge, where we are headlining AbJo’s The Good Foot series with our friends Jennifer Johns out of (Oakland, CA) and today we have a special announcement about one of the Town’s most beloved groups who haven’t hit the stage in years… we’ve got a special set from The Physics!!! And they’ve got something they want to tell you about that day. It’s gonna be a family affair. Tickets are still available here, but don’t wait.
I’m also excited to be joining Kimmortal on the Tacoma stop of their west coast tour for an all-ages show at McMenamins Spanish Ballroom on September 14th (tickets here), and Ijeoma and myself will be joining Bocafloja, Termanology and several more artists in Mexico City, October 21st & 22nd. (tickets here)
Expect to start seeing some playlists, mixes, and things of that sort here after I’m done with KEXP… but until September 12th I’m playing new music for y’all every weekday right here.
It’s medicine in the music, all ways.
