dagger was home-recorded in Queens, NY, in December 2023. The songs are mostly "stream-of-consciousness" style experiments that started with drum tracks as the foundations (thank you to the folks at Drum Drops). From there I layered whatever seemed right over them, and before I knew it there were 10 songs.
The album art is a photo by Graham W. Bell of a basketball in mid-air at Rosemary's Playground off the Forest Ave M train stop. I've always like the idea of a game-clinching shot being called a "dagger", so I figured this was a great time to use that as an album name.
CREDITS:
music + lyrics: Alexei Shishkin
drums: Timmy Rickard, Ben Hampson, Steve Taylor
drum engineering: Ben Thackeray, Ben Hillier, Billy Halliday
mastering: Conor Ryan
special thanks: Graham W. Bell, Connor Hickey