I took a novel approach to creating my contribution to The Outlaw Ocean Music Project. I felt a serious responsibility to honor the material, and for me that meant up-ending my usual process. I immersed myself in the book, noting and re-reading particularly powerful passages as I wrote and recorded the solo piano tracks in my home studio. But something didn’t feel quite right: I decided these stories needed me to expand my sound beyond just the piano. So, I taught myself to have a voice in other mediums by learning to produce, adding symphonic and ambient electronica textures to my piano sound. As I got deeper into the material, I realized I wanted to create something more profound than I imagined at the start. I originally thought I might only write one or two tracks, but ended up writing eight.

Being a part of this project has shifted my perception of the ocean subtly. It will always be a dreamily enigmatic place to me, but I’ve come to realize it is also a void, an empty canvas. And that emptiness creates space for some of the most impactful environmental and human rights abuses that exist on our planet. The amazing thing about the ocean is its ability to encompass all of this meaning and context at the same time. It is so vast and occupies so much space in the collective human psyche, it can be beautiful AND terrible at the same time. Fortunately, we can do something about the latter.

Rachel LaFond