Once Upon a Dirt Patch is not something that I could have ever imagined creating. It is the product of innumerable life experiences and strange coincidences, from a performance class that I took two years ago to the oddly distorted note that kicks off the last third of “Aria”. It’s those coincidences and moments that I hear when I listen to this album; they overpower the literal narrative that progresses with each song. Instead of heartbreak, I hear late nights drinking with friends, or the sound of my roommate making pancakes at four in the morning after he and I got way too high. In the ambient noise I hear all the strange, unplanned quirks of sound provided to us by our equipment throughout the recording process. I listen to these songs and through them watch the development of the relationships, romantic and platonic, that have given fuel to my life in ways that I never saw coming.