I started my sonic side project, Citizen Nowhere, in 2003 when I moved from high school in Louisville, CO to New York University in…well, New York.

In Colorado, the time I had spent as Da7e for Serious Bob had gotten me interested in what I could do with ACID Pro 3.0 and multi-track recording both with direct-plugged instruments and my cheap USB mic. I devised a grand plan to release an album each semester under the name Citizen Nowhere.

Moving from Colorado to New York really through me for a loop and not only informed my solo pseudonym but the repeating themes of displacement, loss and introspective confusion.

The first semester of college saw my debut in the form of Book One: Alone In Americaland, which was an obvious title. Most of the songs had been refined in my freshman year dorm room and a series of collaborators found their way onto the release, from Ari Friedman, who would form Quintus that same year to Scarlett Corso [?] who played flute for my tiny USB mic.

Second semester saw me get more comfortable with my surroundings and friends, and lead to Book Two: Pretentious, which - with a couple exceptions - sucked. The exceptions included when I actually decided to make full songs, sometimes with the help of Nate Patterson, of Serious Bob fame.

Book III: Sin Seer followed in the fall of 2004. I did not intend to make another Citizen Nowhere album, but a soul-crushing breakup motivated me to make - gulp - a concept album. This album also saw the introduction of a naked, reclining woman on the cover of albums written mostly about…women.

Book Four: IV was a depressing album mostly motivated by my drug use in late 2004, early 2005. It plays more like a DJ set, with samples and copy written material running rampant. I’m mostly absent in a vocal sense, and while I imagine this is the least fun album to listen to, I actually very much enjoy it. I can still hear the ideas I had that motivated the experiment.

That ended the “Book” series of Citizen Nowhere. Four additional semesters of college passed and no albums came out. Things were certainly worked on, but nothing formed a unified piece.

The fifth Citizen Nowhere album, Valhalla, saw a tiny, blue, naked, reclining woman on the cover. Needless to say, my heart was ripped from my chest once more and music re-surged as the way to deal with it. That wasn’t the only reason. I had also gotten some new toys and continued work on other musical fronts. But, the masturbatory nature of Citizen Nowhere saw me cobble together old instrumental tracks from pre-2003 and entirely new tracks into a fifth effort.

Before the release of Valhalla, I took the iTunes playlist I had made of my favorite tracks off the “Books series” and released it on my blog as Mirrors & Masks, a Citizen Nowhere compilation and the last Citizen Nowhere cover to feature the name Citizen Nowhere prominently displayed. CN was created to document the transition into college and that was pretty much over.

Out Of Insight, Out Of Mind was the title of the sixth Citizen Nowhere album. It was named such because I don’t really know where that album came from. There were just leftovers from Valhalla and other projects that didn’t fit into anything else really, and they did sort of mirror my mind set at the time.

That’s six albums and one compilation since the fall of 2003.

“Probably a bad time to release the seventh album,” I thought. Both because it would be 3 albums in a year and because…how to put this delicately?….

…Out Of Insight, Out Of Mind was very approachable. A lot of the songs had pop sensibility at their base. Valhalla was about a woman and the past and resurrection, so that didn’t need to be accessible. The Solitary Vice (CN7), just isn’t accessible. I made it so I could listen to it (mostly).

Anyway, in the HUUUUUUUUGE ZIP file I’ve uploaded, I’ve included The Solitary Vice (BETA), just in case someone out there has time to download 531.8 MB and really wants a sneak peek at what this new introspective album sounds like. It will be changed.

Otherwise, if anyone but me has ever wanted all the Citizen Nowhere from the past 5 years, now is the time to get it.

I don’t think there is a place for Citizen Nowhere in the second half of 2009, or maybe ever again.

At least until the next life transition.

Click the image to beign your lengthy 531.8MB download of all 8 Citizen Nowhere albums. Should you so dare…

Ok, I’m in Colorado now, and I didn’t have enough room in my luggage to bring my MIDI controller. At first this pissed me off, because my constant obsession that is referenced in the tagline of this blog. I just really need to be making an album so I have something to do that isn’t celebrity pictures or movie rumors. Otherwise I’d go crazy.

On the other hand, sometimes I take time to do music that could be better spent of celebrity pictures and movie rumors, so it’s sort of like an addiction in the sense that wanting to make music suggests I make bad decisions about my personal scheduling.

Like right now. I’m supposed to be looking up pictures of celebrities. I have another window open that has several tabs of leaked Carmen Electra Playboy photos.

Anyway, I’ve used this time without a MIDI controller to listen to tracks off of (what I was calling) zeroone on multiple devices. This album is going to clock in somewhere between 40 and 50 minutes and is getting really close to release. As both Valhalla and Out Of Insight Out Of Mind proved, none of you are that interested in high-quality AIFF files, so that saves me a lot of rendering time.

THE TITLE HAS BEEN CHANGED. I was reading about old myths of masturbation and realized that they would socially refer to choking your chicken as “the solitary vice.” Of course, I had to snatch that up for my own use. Not only is it a colloquial phrase from the past that refers to masturbation, but my inability to not work on Citizen Nowhere in 2008 was certainly a vice and one I did alone.

zeroone was called such because it was supposed to be an album of instrumentals that only had binary names. The two tracks I’ve posted from it fit this formula (0101 and 010101) and I had seven of them lined up - the seventh being 01010101010101. I was going to do this so no one read into any of the tracks, they were just music, they didn’t “document” anything sonically.

Then, one of the songs got lyrics. And I added a cover song. Things snowballed and zeroone is off. I’ll probably get around to it sometime (I’ve been listening to a bunch of film soundtracks), and I’d really like to do zeroone in the future. I like the idea of 40 minutes of insturmental tracks to plug into my iPod so I can walk aroun the city without silencing my thoughts.

Thus, CN7 is now The Solitary Vice.

IT WILL BE RELEASED TWICE. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but I will be releasing The Solitary Vice in 2 different ways. The first way will be VERY early in 2009. Possibly even on New Year’s Day if I wake up from the hangover.

Sometime in early 2009, there will be a ZIP file of The Complete Citizen Nowhere Collection, “celebrating” five years of Personal Diary Music. That’s 8 albums, 7 of original material and 1 compilation of my favorites from the first four:

Alone In Americaland, Pretentious, III: Sin Seer, IV, Mirrors & Masks, Valhalla, Out Of Insight Out Of Mind, The Solitary Vice

It will be a honkingly huge file, but it represents five years worth of work from 2003-2008.

In the spirit of excess graphic design, the version of The Solitary Vice that appears in the massive collection will have an alt cover that looks like this:

The Solitary Vice: Complete Collection Alt Cover

After that sits in the digestive system of the brave and the few, I’ll have a few days/weeks to contemplate adding tracks to The Solitary Vice, just in case. Sometime in the first quarter of 2009, The Solitary Vice will be released with its real cover:

Citizen Nowhere VII: The Solitary Vice

Got it? Got it?

So, in anticipation of The Solitary Vice, and in the new tradition of Citizen Nowhere, I’m giving you the “promo” single with the official release announcement (that’s this post).

download link “Hey You” by Citizen Nowhere off The Solitary Vice