riife                                                      

bio

originally from florida, I’m a self-taught and tension-melodic music creator, community journalist, and arts advocate living in seattle. since high school, i’ve extensively toured the east coast and pacific northwest playing both conventional venues like sunset tavern to makeshift spaces like punk houses, backyard semi-trailers, and bike shops. i was even banned from our northern neighbors for two years for some early-20s tomfoolery.

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artist statement

my intention and concept-based idiosyncracies are not just part of my music, but my everyday pushing-the-envelope totality as a person. i fail often while on the knife’s edge, yet find success in my small victories of artistic evolution. i gravitate towards concepts and ideas, bulletproof agents. i’m specifically fascinated by the execution of concepts to bring the unfocused into focus and the unheard be heard. i seek to find and connect new worldviews and new worlds of music that are waiting for us to live in them.

 

I understand my music practice as a soundtrack for my existentialism and similar to a spiritual yoga practice – a creative act of deep stretching and radical listening to myself as i intersect with others and the zeitgeist. my noise trumpets the disruption of false/grand narratives I’ve been taught to believe and value. 

 

i'm a compulsive composer. i sing about death/impermanence, neurodiversity, and social cancers like toxic masculinity and the patriarchy. my tension-melodic music draws its catharsis from socially conscious punk/hardcore; it's dark souling from leonard cohen; its healing scar tissue from miles davis and billie holiday; its lyric-forward musicianship from david bazan; and it’s wordplay from chuck d.​

 

topics of cancer
under my solo project riife, i’m currently recording my debut "sound-body of work" called topics of cancer, which is a multi-concept album. it plays on the constellation of metaphorical cancers that kill me inside, which is venn-diagrammed with a caricature case study on myself as a darkly emotional cancer sign. i don't particularly subscribe to astrology, but i've come to understand it as the religion of the millennials and a profound way to learn about and relate to myself and other people. 

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you can peep the first single from topics of cancer called "topic 5 | the unconventional center" below.