WILLIAM LYE-BRIDGE

William’s first release COMPACT MEMORY MACHINE was a digital-only 74-minute track meant as a requiem for the compact disc in which he took short samples from every CD he owned growing up in Lancaster, PA and arranged it into a nostalgic blissed-out digital fog. FACT Magazine hailed it as one the best releases of the year. Alas, all copies had to be destroyed after Bon Jovi’s lawyers called and were unhappy about a sample from one of their hits. For his followup, William recorded sounds from his pregnant girlfriend’s womb and arranged them in a 39-hour loop called THIS BIRTH, THIS LIFE, THIS CHILD. After the relationship ended, William deleted the recordings from all websites though CD-R (unlicensed) copies now fetch up to $375 on Discogs.

For William’s first release on Archie + Fox, William’s pop roots shine forward on I WILL NEVER BE THE WAS I WAS. William recorded the album himself in his parent’s garage, using only a piano and tin can of gasoline, all straight to boom box. The harrowingly personal 26-songs were then “digitized” using AI-trained mastering programs to make the songs Spotify-friendly. That process created unintended flange-like AutoTuning and glitches that give the songs a robotic flair. It’s an album where intimate indie meets our artless future.

William’s first release COMPACT MEMORY MACHINE was a digital-only 74-minute track meant as a requiem for the compact disc in which he took short samples from every CD he owned growing up in Lancaster, PA and arranged it into a nostalgic blissed-out digital fog. FACT Magazine hailed it as one the best releases of the year. Alas, all copies had to be destroyed after Bon Jovi’s lawyers called and were unhappy about a sample from one of their hits. For his followup, William recorded sounds from his pregnant girlfriend’s womb and arranged them in a 39-hour loop called THIS BIRTH, THIS LIFE, THIS CHILD. After the relationship ended, William deleted the recordings from all websites though CD-R (unlicensed) copies now fetch up to $375 on Discogs.

For William’s first release on Archie + Fox, William’s pop roots shine forward on I WILL NEVER BE THE WAS I WAS. William recorded the album himself in his parent’s garage, using only a piano and tin can of gasoline, all straight to boom box. The harrowingly personal 26-songs were then “digitized” using AI-trained mastering programs to make the songs Spotify-friendly. That process created unintended flange-like AutoTuning and glitches that give the songs a robotic flair. It’s an album where intimate indie meets our artless future.