I had almost forgotten about these 7 songs. Calling them songs seems slightly inaccurate. They are more like the emotional root-tone of a powerful dream. They were created at an interesting time. After having struggled heavily financially for 2 and a half years, and then undergone a sudden loss in my life, I suddenly found myself living in the most beautiful place I had ever seen, the Kingdom of Hawai'i. It was 2015. Sometimes after heart-break, the blessing of warm weather acts as loving glue with which to heal and reform oneself. That's what happened here, and these songs (or emo-dream-root-tones) were a part of that process. ⁣
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For some fated reason, after arriving on the Island, I was convinced that I was going to die, and that this would happen very soon. (I wrote about this in the liner notes for the 2017 LP Misted Almond Legacy, which I began recording many months after making these songs). I had left behind all of my musical instruments on the East Coast, and so these bare recordings were made with whatever limited musical options I had at hand. Something primal and basic was coming from me. Ambient sounds, calming vibes, healing tones, phrases of care. I grew up listening to Harold Budd, the Cocteau Twins, Muslimgauze, Brian Eno, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Apex Twin. I think their spirits are probably all floating around somewhere in these ghostly, misty messages.

Emotionally, the pieces were made in a strange spirit of acceptance at what i thought was my fate, I was letting go. ⁣ It was a strangely beautiful time, when all the things that happened in my waking life felt completely like a dream, each day filled with mystical and unexplainable coincidences. I took long walks, went to visit caves and sat in them, ascended beautiful green mountains. My mouth always was closed. And whatever love or life was left in my still-grieving / actively-recovering heart was captured in these very simple, basic recordings when I got home. The warmth I felt as I beheld the beautiful Kingdom of Hawai'i was matched by the inner-warmth I was feeling as I, on some level, began looking past this life and set my thoughts on what is to come after the final sunset (that’s the *other* Kingdom in the EP's title; although the Kingdom of childhood might be a third interpretation).

I could have added a lot more to these pieces after discovering and mastering them now, in late 2019 (to make them more impressive or polished, my producers ear can hear so much more potential for this). But I have decided to leave them in their original form. I hope that the primal emotion reaches through, and that listening to the spaces in between enables you to hear even more of the music that is all around you. ⁣
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Be loving; everything will be okay. ⁣
Yusuf