record release, respite reflections
Friday, February 13th, 2026
It is early dusk here in New Orleans. The final days of this year’s carnival, which I refer to as the “spirit conference," are upon us. The air is cooling, still humid, and the occasional breath of wind voices the chimes dangling atop winding palms and vines and dog poop. I am on the back patio of the family home where my cousin and collaborator, Peter Johnson, along with his husbands Richard and Jonno, live with four dogs. This home has been the site of respite and levity for well over a decade of my life and continues to be where I land for most carnival seasons.
It’s also been almost a calendar year since r∞L4nGc was released, with the expanded version of 23 tracks (11 new) out today on RVNG Intl. Agosto Machado’s ‘Desire (Altar)’, image courtesy of Gordon Robichaux, marks this album cover. On the other side of the Gras, I will write a bit more about these 11 new songs.
I wrote briefly last month reflecting on a specific anecdote and gesture depicted in the album cover; these packs of quarters wrapped in paper from the days of sex theaters in New York during the rise of the AIDS crisis. The thematic center of obfuscation, the right to opacity, and things that can only survive in the shadows, feels reflected in this object-human relation. Several stories co-inhabit these wrapped quarters; the expansive imagination of Samuel Delany’s book Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, which portrays the nuanced social dynamics of sex theaters, the lucid anonymity amongst strangers in a time when growing anxiety tempted to thwart the spreading of AIDS/HIV during a time it could not yet be fully known and understood.
Each song on this record feels bound up in this complexity. Relationships, timelines of obfuscation, and nuance haunt me while listening to this record in its entirety. Deceased community members, lovers, intervals of shaping and exploring with loved ones toward a path of meaningfulness, prayer, and meditation, et al.
When respite first came out, it was difficult not to receive almost any press coverage after working on this album for years, even after partnering with a press agency. In a decimated landscape of music journalism, almost zero press platforms were interested in platforming this music, with a similar sentiment from friends in the music world at large. From respite’s inception, I wanted to leave behind the priority of the vanguard or reaching toward a gesture of greatness, but I still thought that some media outlets out there would align with this intention of smallness, of anecdotal wandering.
This process of grieving anticipations was, however, interrupted by overwhelmingly beautiful messages from countless listeners and people who had found a deep connection to these songs, dispelling my anxieties of reception. Independent music journalists, radio show programmers, and countless fans platformed these songs, shared deeply beautiful stories about their own relationship to loved ones lost, the spirit world, etc. I also spent the greater part of the entire year touring the live show of Gasp! with one unexpected meaningful conversation and connection after the other.
I very much needed to complete this record as a love letter to the margins, to alterity and smallness in all its forms, and all the gestures of music that have imbued my life with meaning, despite their niche qualities. On the other side of it all, I feel so immensely fortunate to be free as an artist and to hopefully demonstrate the paths of aliveness that exist in the margins.
It’s an unexpected liberation to unbind myself from the fear of making things that won’t perform well commercially and to feel loved and supported in a wandering path of creating and sustaining a meaningful relationship to process. I think about this in terms of all those who might be reading this who are also creating strange, peculiar, and deviant forms, committing to the freak, committing to alternative forms, and feeling the austerity of a world that wishes to commodify and quantify each project.
If you are one of those people reading this, please keep making your weird art and finding your people! Stay free, protect your heart, protect your time, stay open and weird and make difficult music, PLEASE!
I could not relay this experience without also mentioning the immense support from loved ones and from Matt Werth of RVNG Intl., whose love and commitment to the prismatic and poetic experience of listening have allowed so much beauty and complexity to enter this world. My booking agent, Joe Hatt for believing in me for over this last decade of touring. Musical geniuses Kevin Kenkel, Peter Johnson Bowling, Michael Beharie, Nick Hallett, Nick Weiss, Cecile Believe, Lyra Pramuk, Ben Babbitt, Bobbi Salvor Menuez, and all those who said “I believe in you” throughout this process.
And most importantly, YOU, listener, reader, co-conspirator, freak witch, angel bitch, friend and stranger, I owe a great thanks to everyone willing to spend time with this music and the storytelling embedded within and around it. In case it needs to be underlined, I appreciate you, your generosity, your willingness, and your curiosity.
And to those who came before me, the unknown, unnamed figures who fought for my rights and built the world I live in today, thank you.
Love,
Colin
CURRENTLY READING:
Kay Gabriel: Perverts
DEEP LISTENING:
r∞L4nGc (Expanded)
