Colin Ward · CRFW

Album a Month

Span: 2009-01 – 2012-02
Project: alphabets

Colin explicitly stated a goal: “I’m going to try for an album a month.” The archive
confirms he largely achieved it, producing a sustained run of monthly releases from
early 2009 through 2012 — sometimes two in a single month (December 2009). This was the
foundational creative practice of the alphabets era: high-volume, lo-fi, themed monthly
drops that established his naming style, his aquatic vocabulary, and his practice of
organizing output into conceptual batches. The earliest releases (JANFEB09, MARCH09,
JUNE_MONSTERS_09) are in M4A format — GarageBand or iPhone recordings; by September 2009
he had shifted to MP3, signaling a production upgrade.

Colin stated his goal plainly: he was going to try to release an album a month. The archive shows him doing it — a sustained run of monthly drops beginning in early 2009 and continuing, with some gaps, through 2012.

The Practice

The albums are home-produced and often short — some 6 tracks, some 20 — recorded, titled, organized, and archived within the month. The earliest ones (JANFEB09 and MARCH09) are in M4A format, the native output of GarageBand on Mac or iPhone voice memos, suggesting these were made on whatever tools Colin had at hand in early 2009. By September 2009, he’d upgraded to MP3 export, and the production quality (while still deliberately lo-fi) reflects more intentional studio work.

Each album tends to have a theme or naming convention:

  • JANFEB09 and MARCH09: Free-associative, run-on titles — “sweater wearing as an activity for small objects in the couch,” “BOB ROSS RAVEGROOVE LOVE TRIBUTE”
  • JUNE_MONSTERS_09: Rigidly themed — every track is “[adjective] monster [action].” The earliest fully themed album in the catalog.
  • sep09: Aquatic/animal vocabulary that prefigures the underwaters series
  • NOV09: Introduces “bliss body” (later a memorial event name) and “fantasia mixx” (Fantasia as concept, November 2009)
  • DEC09SCIFI: Sci-fi register — robots, hover jets, star wars puns
  • SFTWRSYNTHZdec09: “Software synths” — explicitly about the tools; two December releases in 2009
  • JANFEB11 PIRATE LIFE: Pirate theme; the most cohesively themed of the 2011 albums
  • APRIL CO-EDS 2011: Contains “fantasia2011.mp3” — the earliest archive evidence of a Fantasia 2011 event

Timeline

AlbumMonth/YearTracksFormat
JANFEB09Jan–Feb 200921M4A
MARCH09hopdanceshakebumpMarch 200922M4A
JUNE_MONSTERS_09June 200915M4A
sep09September 20099MP3
octobrr09October 200911MP3
NOV09November 200915MP3
DEC09SCIFIDecember 200910MP3
SFTWRSYNTHZdec09December 20098MP3
LIFEBEFORETIMESOUNDTRACKJanuary 201010MP3
may10May 20109MP3
JULY2010July 20109MP3
OCTOBRR2010October 201021MP3
JANFEB11 PIRATE LIFEJan–Feb 201114MP3
forjaniechantdanceFebruary 20111MP3
APRIL CO-EDS 2011April 20116MP3
feb2012February 20121MP3

Gap months (April–May 2009, July–August 2009, Jan–April 2010, etc.) may reflect missing archived material or intentional breaks.

Significance

This project is the foundation of everything. The underwaters series, the [___]POWER family, the REMIX compilations — all of these emerge from the discipline and creative surplus of a practice that was already producing albums monthly. The album-a-month approach is also the context for understanding track titles: when you’re releasing 10–20 tracks a month, titles become fast, intuitive, associative — no time for deliberation.

By 2010, the monthly cadence becomes less consistent as Colin develops longer-form projects (underwaters, SUNPOWER, the Bandcamp catalog). By 2011 the practice is winding down. By February 2012, a single-track stub (“s2.mp3”) is all that remains of the goal.

Notes for Website

This is the origin story of alphabets — a prolific, self-imposed creative challenge that produced hundreds of tracks over three years. For the website, this can be framed as: “Colin set a goal and kept it. The archive is the proof.”

In this series

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