Tourism album cover
Download album: MP3 (72.2 MB) | AAC (72.9 MB) | FLAC (310.0 MB)

This album (except for one track) is also available for free on Bandcamp, in case you'd find that more convenient.

  1. Staccato (4:05)
  2. Adverb (3:59)
  3. Pulsive (3:46)
  4. Eichhörnchen (3:07)
  5. Make My Move (3:25)
  6. Sevennaise (6:21)
  7. VII (3:30)
  8. Little Boy (3:11)
  9. Skytalker (3:39)
  10. Sonny's Mazurka (2:28)
  11. Folk Out With My Yolk Out (2:31)
  12. Home Base (Postgoodism's Personal Blend) (3:43)
  13. Kyle's Arrival (2:34)
  14. Stuck At Zero (2:46)

Most of the songs on this album were written as part of an annual "song-a-week" challenge called June Bug. We chose a prompt every week, but it was just a suggestion; ultimately you could write whatever you wanted. "What I wanted" would change radically from week to week, depending on what I'd been listening to most recently -- new age guitar & flute, a favorite childhood folk song, organ-heavy funk, hip-hop mashups, a chiptune here and there... I felt very much like a genre tourist, lingering just long enough to pick up a bit of the language and a few local customs before jetting off to the next destination.

Maybe it'll feel the same way as a listener. If you don't like a song, just wait a few minutes and try the next one; it's probably completely different.

I'd like to thank all the folks who helped bring these songs into existence, directly or indirectly, whether they realize it or not:

Written, produced, played, recorded, engineered, mixed, mastered and mangled by Postgoodism, with the following exceptions:


01. Staccato


MP3 (6.2 MB) | AAC (6.1 MB) | FLAC (26.0 MB)

June Bug 2020, week 1
This was the first original song I'd written (and finished) in several years; I had a LOT of ground I wanted to cover, and ended up cramming maybe 3-4 songs worth ideas into this one track. I was pleasantly surprised that it all fit together as well as it did.

Zircon's "The End" was my guiding light for the overall song structure.


02. Adverb


MP3 (5.9 MB) | AAC (5.9 MB) | FLAC (27.2 MB)

June Bug 2021, week 1
I was going for an Ulrich Schnauss-y sort of vibe, bouncing and shuffling along through entirely too much reverb. I enlisted my kids to help with the last verse.


03. Pulsive


MP3 (5.7 MB) | AAC (5.7 MB) | FLAC (29.3 MB)

The was the first track from this album that I started writing (in June of 2018, on a plane home from Canada), and the last one I finished. I was listening to a lot of Malmen at the time, and wanted to try writing some cheesy fakebit pop.

The lead synth here is based on a preset patch in reason called "NintenDONT", which I love to bits. My natural inclination is to use it absolutely everywhere, but instead I gave it this one track in which to shine.


04. Eichhörnchen


MP3 (4.7 MB) | AAC (4.7 MB) | FLAC (22.3 MB)

June Bug 2021, week 2
The prompt for the week was "write something in an uncommon time signature", I decided to go for 13/8.

I had dabbled with a Rhodes patch at the end of the previous week's track (Adverb), and decided to lean all the way into it for this track. There's something about a dirty, funky organ that's unusually satisfying to write for; it's like there's no such thing as a wrong note.


05. Make My Move


MP3 (4.7 MB) | AAC (5.1 MB) | FLAC (18.4 MB)

My challenge to myself for this track was to write a song with lyrics that were not about how difficult it is to write a song with lyrics. The trick turned out to be not to overthink things; I dashed these lines out in magic marker on the back of one of my daughter's drawings in about ten minutes. They're not exactly Dylan-caliber material, but they got the job done. And nasty organ organ patches are just as fun to play as ever.


06. Sevennaise


MP3 (9.3 MB) | AAC (9.3 MB) | FLAC (41.0 MB)

June Bug 2020, week 3
I decided to make a song using nothing but samples I ripped myself -- no pre-made loop libraries, no virtual/physical instruments, no MIDI tracks at all. In the end I plundered 22 songs, four films, a video game cutscene, a clip from a 20-year-old episode of the Daily Show, and a YouTube slime video.

I have secured the legal rights to exactly zero of these sources. Please don't sue me.

It's called "Sevennaise" because in the Camelot Wheel system for mixing between keys, the songs included in this mix would be 7As.

Track list (spoilers):

07. VII


MP3 (5.5 MB) | AAC (5.3 MB) | FLAC (25.0 MB)

This song started out as a sequel to a song from my previous album, VI. I wrote some electric guitar parts for it, but synthesized guitars are what we in the software business call a "minimum viable product". Fortunately I was able to conscript the legendary Andreas Fredriksson and his army of actual physical guitars. I asked Andreas to overdub my original guitar part -- and he did, admirably! But he provided so much additional material (a rhythm part! Solos! Duets!) that I just had to find a way to use it all.


08. Little Boy


MP3 (4.6 MB) | AAC (4.8 MB) | FLAC (21.5 MB)

June Bug 2022, week 1
For this batch of songs, I wanted to focus on my "playing and recording live instruments and vocals" skills. That proved to be a sufficiently daunting challenge, so I focused on cover songs that I could adapt to the mountain dulcimer.

This song was written by my dear friend Jimmy Hinson. As of October 2022, he's never released it himself, but a long time ago he sent me two versions he'd recorded (in 2002 and 2012 respectively), and it's always been one of my favorites. It uses a weird non-standard D/A/D tuning on the acoustic guitar; lucky for me, that's what the dulcimer uses right out of the box!

I loved how the boy in the song grew up in Jimmy's versions (he was 23 in the first draft, and 33 in the second), so I took the liberty of aging him up into his 40s this time around.


09. Skytalker


MP3 (5.1 MB) | AAC (5.5 MB) | FLAC (19.0 MB)

June Bug 2020, week 2
The prompt for this week was "inspired by yourself as a kid". When I reached the age where I wanted to start taking some personal agency in my music-listening habits, my first step was to raid my mom's dusty collection of Windham Hill CDs. George Winston, Tim Story, Shadowfax...these were my rebellious teenager new-age jams.

There was one song in particular that I listened to over and over: Windham Hill founder William Ackerman's "Conferring With The Moon", from his 1986 album of the same name. From what I remember of the liner notes, the song was written while sitting on a balcony in Europe, pining for some distant / lost / unrequited love, and picking out the same two chords over and over again into the night sky. Teenage-me found that irresistably romantic.

This song is...pretty much that song. It's not a note-for-note cover by any means, but it's the same gentle instrumentation over the same two chords, and it follows the same overall arc that I've known by heart for decades (through some truly baffling time-signature changes, I might add). We don't really have a word for that -- a loving homage? A shameless rip-off? A gritty modern reboot? You be the judge. Here's the original, so you can decide how much credit I deserve.


10. Sonny's Mazurka


MP3 (3.7 MB) | AAC (3.8 MB) | FLAC (16.1 MB)

According to a YouTube comment I found once, the "Sonny" in question is the late Sonny Brogan, an accordion player from Dublin. The tune itself is a traditional Irish song, but this arrangement in particular is very faithful to this version from "One Size Fits All", a 1985 album by Different Shoes (Elmer Beal, Anne Dodson, Tom Judge and Pixie Lauer). My parents had a copy of the album in cassette in the family car, and this is just one of those things that imprinted on toddler-me.

I recreated it with a few creative liberties, more or less from memory, in a Starbucks one afternoon in May of 2019.


10. Folk Out With My Yolk Out


MP3 (4.0 MB) | AAC (3.9 MB) | FLAC (17.6 MB)

June Bug 2021, week 4
I had just bought myself an Appalachian mountain dulcimer, for several unimpeachable reasons:

  1. I've had a particular fondness dulcimer music since I was a kid.
  2. I'd heard it was ludicrously simple to play, like an easy-mode acoustic guitar.
  3. My long-term cottage-core dream is to retire to retire from the tech industry, live in a cabin in the woods and play stringed instruments on my porch all day.
  4. I'm a grown-ass adult now and can do what I want with my disposable income.

I'd had my dulcimer for just over a week when I wrote and recorded this song. So, can confirm: ludicrously simple to play, so long as you like the key of D Major.


12. Home Base (Postgoodism's Personal Blend)


MP3 (5.7 MB) | AAC (5.6 MB) | FLAC (21.5 MB)

I can take vanishingly little credit for this song. But first let me tell you about Beast Breaker, a puzzle game by Vodeo Games. It's kinda like a combination of Puzzle Bobble and Shadow of the Colossus. It's a ton of fun, and you should get it. It also features a soundtrack by Big Giant Circles, which is characteristically just top-notch.

Between levels, you return to your character's cozy cottage. There are four rooms to move between, each of which can be upgraded several times over the course of the game. Each upgrade level of each room has its own musical theme, and they're all in tune and in time with each other.

So, Jimmy made all that, and then all I did was show up (uninvited), take the stems he provided for the "Home" loops, and found a pleasing sequence in which to play them such that a more traditional song structure emerged. It's all made of Jimmy's loops; my only contributions were crossfading and some light EQing. If you like it, go check out the rest of the soundtrack!


13. Kyle's Arrival


MP3 (3.9 MB) | AAC (4.0 MB) | FLAC (17.5 MB)

June Bug 2022, week 4
I wanted to wrap up the month with one more mountain dulcimer cover, and this song was an easy and appropriate choice. My soft spot for the dulcimer is a direct result of listening to Anne Dodson as a kid (see the notes for Sonny's Mazurka). When I bought my dulcimer in 2020, Anne's series of dulcimer instruction books was a same-day purchase and an enormously helpful resource. Two years later, arranging and recording one of her songs felt like an appropriate first step towards saying "thank you".

The original appears on Anne's 1995 album Almost Grown.


14. Stuck At Zero


MP3 (3.9 MB) | AAC (4.2 MB) | FLAC (14.3 MB)

June Bug 2020, week 4
This week's challenge happened to overlap with an extremely busy week at work, and when it came time to write a song I felt like I had nothing left to give; a total creative brick wall. But then I remembered some great advice my grad school professor had on the subject of brick walls, and that was all it took to unstick myself.

If you enjoy this track, I can recommend a whole album in the same vein: Abstraction's Creationism.