David Urbinati
My solo project where I experiment with sounds and turn my thoughts and feelings into songs.
WORKPLACE DIARIES
These are a collection of songs I wrote while I really should have been working…
With emotions ranging from chaos and tight timelines to revelation and serenity, I’m exploring my relationship to work and life and what really matters.
Is there life in the daily grind, or is there something more?
Originally, I had hoped to make a music video for each song in a different visual style but all together would tell a story. I actually waited a long time before releasing this record in anticipation of doing so but alas my ambition eyes are often bigger than my reality stomach. It was time to get it off my hard drive into the ether.
You can see conceptually in the cover art my musical keyboard and my working keyboard battling against each other creating, in a season of life, a dichotomy of decision for myself—“Which keyboard will I use to express myself today?” I’m sure you can infer from this records existence that most times music won.
W3EKS - A MUSICAL JOURNALING PROJECT
I had no idea what was gonna happen when I challenged myself to write a song every day for 3 weeks. Originally, it started as a journaling project—something to focus my energy in a constructive and creative way during a period of time where I knew I was going to be in a heightened emotional state. At the surface, it may seem like just a lot of specific stories and feelings during an arbitrary period of time, but really it turned into a cohesive and what I feel is complete record about fear, hope, loss, pain, and acceptance.
I didn’t go digging for these things. They were literally just bubbling at the surface for me. Committing to the discipline of the daily nature of the project and writing so fast made the songs quite honest and really an important force in processing my life at the time. There wasn’t much space to doubt myself and so I just put stuff down. After finishing each song I felt myself a little bit different than before I had written it.
At the beginning of the second week, I broke my ankle in a longboarding accident. It was the most physical pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. Emotionally, I sunk pretty low but even though I wasn’t able to write every day after that point, part of my lifeline was to continue in the best way that I could in the timeframe I had set out. So I kept going.
Here I present to you “w3eks”: 13 chronological tracks that are really a score to the story of a very specific and quite unplanned season of my life. I’m lucky I had the tape rolling.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I found life in making it.
Special thanks to Earl Bennett for remotely recording live drums on “skate” and to Sam Moses for mastering all of these moods to fit together.
P.S. For anyone who needs their own creative nudge—just do it and don’t try so hard. You already have everything you need right there just below the surface.
STREAM THE SOPHOMORE ALBUM “WINDOWS” EVERYWHERE GOOD MUSIC IS HEARD (Spotify, Apple Music)
Featuring collabs from Ghost Lion, Jordan Laurenti, Josh Jones, and The Transient Friends, Windows is a collection of songs that express unfulfilled yet hopeful longings.
The cover art is made up of an image of a sunset as the background with a rectangle of a sunrise composited in the center. The idea being that often times new things are born out of letting go of the old.
An “easter egg,” if you will, of this record is the title track (track 5) which is an acoustic reworking of the Windows 95 startup theme on piano accompanied by strings.
WAVE.S FULL-LENGTH ALBUM (Spotify, Apple Music)
OVERTAKE ME MUSIC VIDEO
Overtake Me by David Urbinati from WAVE.S full-length album OUT NOW on all listening platforms (Spotify, Apple Music).
Artist: David Urbinati
Directed by: Angel Safaddid
Production Company: Datzi Media
Waves is a term I use often to describe what happens with my emotions. I’ll say I’m going through a wave. A peak and valley of feelings. Periodic. Temporary. When I go through a wave I generally never want that to happen again. But often it does. They’re often in sequence. They're often in WAVE.S.
In 2017, I set out to express myself through musical journaling. The goal was to keep songs relatively simple in structure and find phrases and lyrics that were mostly at the tip of my tongue—hopefully revealing what I was freshly experiencing. The writing process for each of these songs was short. A couple of days usually. They had to come together quickly or the wave would pass and the song would fade away.
I am releasing this solo album as David Urbinati because these songs represent the most authentic me both musically and lyrically. I delved into the world of analog synths and explored their unique sounds in the process. I wrote these songs from my bedroom studio when the inspiration or need for release struck.
2017 was a year of some huge insight, learning, and growth in my own story. Seeing parts of my life in ways I had not seen before. Both painful and life giving. Higher highs and low lows. I began regular counseling sessions as a way to process what was coming up. The relationships and community I’ve had through this time has given me the space to see where I am and be loved there.
In the midst of that I journaled with sound. Exploring soundscapes and textures electronic instruments can make. I find it fascinating to take electricity created by power plants on the grid and generate simple waveforms that are manipulated into synthesized sound. Learning about voicing and arrangement I mixed this with the acoustic instruments I grew up playing—namely violin and mandolin—and my vocals. When I first began writing music I made a lot of instrumental music not confident or sure about my voice or what I had to say. The more I write the more I'm learning to find my voice and I am very excited to share this with you all. I hope these songs resonate with you as they do with me.
WAVE.S full-length album (Spotify, Apple Music)
