Track By Track: Oberhofer - NOTALGIA EP • DIY Magazine

Brad Oberhofer didn’t ask to be inspired by life-changing situations - the kind you fear of experiencing yourself - but those are what help make up his new ‘NOTALGIA’ EP.

Skip down to the description of ‘Together / Never’ - a closer but ultimate acting centrepiece on the EP - and you’ll be taken straight to the heart of one of life’s most destructive forces, and the way in which it affects surrounding friends and family. ‘NOTALGIA’ deals with drugs and their destructiveness, the bubble users cosy themselves up in when they’re depressed. It’s a harsh, difficult topic to discuss in music, but on this EP Brad pulls it off quite remarkably.

We decided to find out firsthand what the songs mean on one of the year’s more personal, affecting releases.

You + Me (Still Together In The Future)
I try never to ‘Miss’ anyone. I know people really like the feeling they get when someone tells them they are ‘missed,’ but here’s the thing: it’s important to never wish for anything you can’t have at risk of it causing an under-appreciation of the resources available in the present. So, I opt to not ‘miss’ my friends, but rather romanticize the thought of seeing them again in the future.

Got Your Letter
I think it’s important to write letters via snail mail to your loved ones. Handwriting illustrates a lot about a person’s character, and when you receive a letter from a friend, you get to understand them in an entirely new capacity.

’-‘
Often times music does not need words because exists in place of them. Most music can’t and shouldn’t be translated into words. All music can be vaguely described. A verbal description of Egyptian Pyramids will not provide you with the impact of their physical grandeur.

Earplugs
When people are addicted to drugs or depressed, they are often sucked into a world that makes it impossible to think beyond sadness or to absorb any emotional support from friends and family,’ Oberhofer told Rolling Stone. ‘In the past few years, I’ve lost some friends to things like this. In those situations, there was nothing I could have said to help them. They couldn’t have heard me if they’d tried.’

Together / Never
I came home to my apartment in Bushwick around one in the morning, packed a suitcase full of recording equipment and caffeinated beverages, brought it to my rehearsal space, and stayed up all night writing and recording a demo for this song. It is about a lot of things. It is about marriage. It is about how marriage is both death and birth. It is about how many marriages are not all-encompassing and can sometimes be dishonest, but also vice-versa.

A week after I recorded ‘Together/Never,’ I awoke to the death of a roommate. It was the first time I had seen a dead body. Two days after that, I sat in the park with a close friend. I recorded a note to myself:

‘It’s 4:41 PM, Sunday, July 22nd, 2012, and I’m coming to terms with death.’

Exclusively stream the ‘NOTALGIA’ EP below. It gains release through Glassnote Records on 15th July.