Get ready - this one's a journey. The story about Beyondsonic is the story about me.
I love electronic music. It does what basically no other genre can do: use the ENTIRE frequency spectrum. No matter how good your drumkit is, nor how new your bass is, you'll never get the power and energy that can be encapsulated digitally. I got to witness the explosion and refinement of electronic music through the late 90's and 00's as Digital Audio Workstations empowered the genre to evolve from simple beats for dancefloors to profound, emotional, and impactful tracks we all had in our iPods. It only got better. More applicable. More profound.
I also love the Christian faith. I grew up in the church, and lived out firsthand how worship cultivated a culture of music. ANYBODY could be a musician or a singer or a sound tech in a church. But even more importantly - I saw THEOLOGY. Ancient texts written by people who existed thousands of years ago, writing down the profound truths they spent lifetimes understanding. REAL people, with all their hopes and flaws and glories and pains, and the profound lessons they recorded through it all.
Eventually, I started discovering tiny moments where the two would intersect; worship songs that got remixes, or Christian producers that added lyrics to their mixes. But I never saw the two fully meet.
EDM always carried this stigma of "dancefloor", and the drugs and lasciviousness most often associated with it, and Christian pop music had to be "separate" from that. And even for those who didn't feel that way, anybody with the skill to work a DAW wasn't spending years learning theology, and anybody who knew theology didn't concern themselves with music as weird and niche as electronic music. But for years, I thirsted for this. What other genre could more perfectly encapsulate such universality of message and profoundness than electronic music? What other tools could utilize the entire sound spectrum? What other music was free from the limitations of physical instruments? Somebody HAD to connect these things eventually...
So that's what I decided to do. To connect the most profound music to the most profound message.
I went to school to learn audio engineering, recording, and production; I went to Bible college to learn music and theology. I spend a decade in the church, serving as a singer, worship leader, and sound tech; I spent two decades learning music production and songwriting. I explored branding, connected with local artists, practiced releasing some songs and albums. I settled on the name Beyondsonic - because anybody can write amazing music, but not everybody has a message with it.
Well, part of Christian teaching is making sure your family is #1 priority. I decided I wanted to be married, so I started a relationship, moved to Maine, and applied for a home loan. We were ALMOST there, almost at the point of stability we needed that I could launch my music career from. Sadly, one November day, I found out she was talking to another man. I tried for a month to save the relationship, but eventually she left me for him. I was crushed, devastated, and broken. Then, during my grieving, the world was hit with a global pandemic. Isolation on top of isolation, and a dream 5 years in the making torn down to dust. At this point, effectively homeless, living in my camper, crying myself to sleep on a moldy mattress with a $50 laptop and one last microphone... I wrote and recorded "The Long Way Around". A self-edification rooted in the Word that gave me hope to press on. That time lost doesn't mean the journey was over. And so my journey began. And what a wild ride it has been.
That summer, the Black Lives Matter protests broke out. My Christian community, who was traditionally very conservative, immediately sided with all things Republican. They were hard against vaccines, social distancing, lockdowns/church lockdowns, and reviled in the face of minorities demanding justice in the streets. Having spent so much time studying the Bible, and having a formal education on critical thinking and formal logic, I did what I had always done - I applied what Scripture ACTUALLY TAUGHT against the current events, to see which side was right or wrong. I spoke the truth, as free from bias as I knew how, and let the Word be my standard, and refused to conform to what the world was doing. The Bible DOES demand "social justice". The Bible DOES have precedent for social distancing and even church lockdowns. In fact, I began to realize just how many practices and beliefs the church had that were not actually in line with the Scriptures. As soon as I spoke up, so many in the church turned against me. Some of these were even the people who would teach us for years to "Always stand up for what you believe in, no matter who opposes you". Isolation on top of isolation was met with betrayal on top of betrayal. I found myself without a party... without a community. Without even one loyal person to stand by me in my message. In this loneliness, I wrote "Nomad".
From there on, I have since watched the church choose a path aligned with politics over Scripture, and watched them begin to act out of fear instead of faith. New England is already pretty devoid of music opportunity for anybody who doesn't play a guitar... but for the nationwide music industry, with concerts cancelled and tours shut down, my hopes for launching a career in music were thoroughly dashed. My mission was now no longer just to write sound music, but to present an anchor in truth... if for nobody else, then at least for myself.
Through the next few years, I worked as hard as I could in the trades to earn a living, which just got harder and harder as costs went up and wages stagnated. My songs are complex, multi-layered, and take time to craft well. With over 40 hours invested in a single song, I found myself unable to produce more than about two a year working full-time. But that's what I could do, so that's what I did. I began writing songs based on Bible characters, and their arcs through trial and triumph. "From the Shadows" is about David and Gideon; "Tamar" is about the Bride in Song of Solomon.
Eventually, after a few years, lockdowns ended, precautions waned, and by God's grace I packed up my camper and old Toyota pickup truck and moved to Atlanta in hopes I could find some opportunity in music there. Still struggling with male loneliness and feeling a lack of community, I wrote "I Need You", an act of surrendering my ultimate frustrations to God.
And God heard me through that song.
In Atlanta, I not only found a wonderful community where I felt HEARD and VALUED for the first time in my life, but I also found a woman just as crazy and passionate as I was. We got married, moved back to New England to be closer to my family, and found the stability I had been wanting. I felt like I had finally made it to the other side of that chasm I sang about in The Long Way Around.
But then, just as things were starting to settle down for us, the whole world descended into chaos again.
As soon as the 2024 election was officiated, the atrocities began. Loyalist police in our streets, sweeping up entire families into concentration camps, bombs being dropped on children in the Middle East, and the church descending down a path of intentional deception as they chose loyalty to a man over loyalty to Christ. This put me in a dark depression, feeling so powerless as to what I could do. Post-Covid, I now have chronic fatigue struggles, and just barely being back on my feet in such a bad economy meant I could only do so much in protests.
But I still had the Words of Christ, and I still had my music. So in this era, I have written "Riptide", a song about Jonah and God's confrontation agains his prejudice; "Breach the Bitter", a song unveiling how Ruth's solidarity to Naomi was prophetic of Christ's solidarity to us through dangerous times; and "TURN", which I consider a directly prophetic word, warning the church about how God sees the atrocities we are complicit in.
This era is not over yet. It will be some day. But until it is, I will continue preaching Christ and His teachings through my music, standing firm in the truth and in love, and never ceasing to make it known.
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Every song represents more than a week's worth of work to create, and every one is released for free. You can find Beyondsonic on Youtube, iTunes, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your music. But you can also listen right here, ad-free forever. The music player has all my currently published tracks. If you click the image, you'll get the full playlist view.
My music is 100% original work. None of these songs are remixes or covers of other artists; I don't use "samples" of other's songs and I have NEVER used generative AI. If these songs mean as much to you as they do to me, consider supporting me on Patreon. I'm still holding out hope that I can do art as a living some day. When that happens, I'll be able to write and release ten times the amount of music as I do now. But until that happens, Beyondsonic will always be my calling... even if my audience is just one.
Let's make this LOUD!