Owen Butler Music

Music

We Clip the Angels’ Wings

Bells&Whistles

Blunders

Melancholy-Free

I Want to Know It

Carnelian

You and Your Dad

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

NASA

Chopped Liver

Last Summer, Last Love

The City Sleeps… But I’m Alive!

Harddd uuGGHh (Outro)

If Aramburu was about dealing with the new-found existential angst that comes with adolescence, We Clip the Angels’ Wings expands the story into young adulthood. 

Being the second chapter in my “canon” of personal songwriting, I struggled with where to take this album’s story and how to blend it with my personal experience.

Trying to write a long-stretching body of work about and during a time of such fast personal growth turns into a creative race—you’re trying to write a song faster than you can grow out of it. 

At its core, this We Clip the Angels’ Wings can be described by one line from Melancholy-Free:

“Trapped between yourself, empty dreams, and who you want to be”

This is an album of growing pains. Of confusion. Of grief for a world that turned out far more messy and violent than any child could anticipate. 

While many of these songs have deeply personal elements, I found myself inhabiting a different “archetype” of young adult for each song: the lover finding flaws in the carnelian, the aimless student lost in retrograde, the weary soul shouting from the rooftops.

As young adults we have all been one of these people at some point, and we drift between them as we find our place in this world. 

But underlying is a thread of hope. Hope that all will be okay one day. A realization that one does not have to resign themself to the demands of the world. That who we are and who we want to be are constantly changing, and that hard work begets clarity if we try to change for the better. 

I made this album on my laptop. I liked recording and producing on the go. It allowed me to achieve a level of intimacy with the music that bigger setups might hinder. The mixing and production on this project aren’t the norm, but that’s on purpose. It’s gritty and processed, with moments of life peaking through. This album is a journal for all who have experienced the dizzying chapter of finding who you are. 

I’m excited to take you on this journey with me. I think you might feel spoken to.

Vultures Peripheral

Written and produced over a month, Vultures Peripheral explores ideas of isolation, the loneliness crisis, and finding peace with oneself. There is a difference between being alone and being lonely, and there’s a power that comes with knowing that being alone does not mean you have to feel isolated

Rufous vs Anna’s

Anna’s is a species of hummingbird that spends its entire life in the same place—the pacific north west. Rufous hummingbirds on the other hand migrate from Mexico to Alaska every year. And when these two species meet they fight to the death. The first half of this piece is a sampled an orchestral arrangement before transitioning into an experimental electronic soundtrack in the later half.

Aramburu

Aramburu Island is a small nature preserve off the coast of the northern San Fransisco Bay. It’s a small spit of land that I always used to kayak by. I always wanted to run aground and explore, but there’s a giant sign telling intruders to keep out. Aramburu quickly became a metaphor for the places in life we strive to reach but never quite grasp. Released in 2022, Aramburu provides an adolescent’s reflection on how growing up amidst the Covid pandemic impacts social interaction, self-worth, and lived experience.