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ABOUT DASEIN

Under the stage name Dasein, Brandon Say is an independent multi-instrumental musician based in San Francisco, CA. Originally hailing from Charlotte, NC, where he wrote his first 3 albums–Entropy (2015), Peaks (2015), and Come To Be (2019)–Say moved west in the summer of 2019 to continue his training as a physician in pathology at Stanford. There he has produced another album, Pacifica (2020), and an EP, Nescient I (2022). Derived from the Heideggerian term denoting “the being for which Being itself is an issue”, Dasein uses instrumental music to explore the universe and human consciousness, and the subjectivity therein. Known for creating longform, programmatic musical journeys with a nearly symphonic structure, Dasein draws from a wide range of sonic textures and genres, including electronic, funk, ambient, dance, and more. This imparts a unique and varied aesthetic that draws one deep into the mind. While the pieces are divided into tracks (pt. I, pt. II, etc.), each is best appreciated as a single, continuous experience. He takes inspiration from masters like Johann Johannson, Stars of the Lid, Sigur Ros, STS9, Emancipator, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Fourtet, and Philip Glass. His early work was inspired by the wonders of the natural world, including the life cycle of a star (Nebula Cycle), the subatomic universe (Valence), and the majesty of the Appalachian mountains (Peaks) where he spent formative years of his early adulthood. An intense period of personal struggle and growth produced a shift in the inspiration for his work towards an exploration of the human experience and identity, eventuating in the creation of Come To Be, his most personal and poignant piece to date. Life eventually led him far from home to start anew in California. He began work on Pacifica while still in North Carolina and finished after planting roots in the San Francisco Bay Area, making this his “bridge” song between an old and new life. Around that time in 2019, he began developing themes and motifs for his most ambitious project to date, Nescient, which will be composed of 4 longform pieces with intervening interludes that all share and explore these themes. In December 2022, he completed and released the first of these longform pieces, Nescient I, which will serve as the opening of the eventual Nescient project. Inspired by the humbling nature of aging that beckons us to question all we thought we knew about life, Nescient is meant to be more of a landscape to explore rather than the linear journey provided by Dasein’s prior works.