Elcee the Alchemist

In the 20 months since its release, Coasting has gained just over 3,000 streams on Spotify. This is around £10… and I really couldn’t care less. This song (and its accompanying video) is one of my most cherished works of art, I love it with all my heart and it was never created for anyone other than me.

Which is why I have chosen to decide the market value of this piece, not the audience.  I have contemplated what would be my first release on Catalog since before my Sound genesis and feel that there is no other song I would be more proud to publish than Coasting.

Everything you hear and see was created by me. It was produced, written, recorded, mixed, directed, filmed and edited all within 24 hours. I uploaded it to SoundCloud and social media the next day as part of my Odyssey series, but I knew this one felt different, it needed its own life.

Coasting was created during a 2 day escape to a seaside town where my friend lived. It was a period of my life where things were falling after a wave of highs and I felt truly sombre. I felt that I wasn’t living up to the person I presented myself to be, both as an artist and as a human. At that time my parents were going through a divorce and had just moved out of our family home that same week, which came with its own struggles. I was also in a really confusing and hurtful situation with that (now former) friend, little did I know things would get a lot worse before they got better.

This song is nothing more than an honest translation of my inner feelings. Every sound, word and shot has a deep meaning and memory attached to it for me. How you interpret it is up to you. It was never made for an audience, which is why the fact that it has brought solace to others is so profound to me; no number of streams can balance the weight of another soul resonating with my own creation. Coasting always brings me this strange feeling of melancholic nostalgia, looking back on a time filled with so much uncertainty and doubt. For me, this piece of art captures the very essence of my life in that moment in time and through this, that part of me will live on forever.

I don’t care if this sells tomorrow, in 10 years or in an eternity. What I care about is that I had control over how it is valued in the world, not streaming platforms. Therefore, I’m minting it at 1 Ethereum. Of course, to me it is priceless, but too often we allow others to dictate the value of our work, whether it be likes, views or sales. This is a piece of our universe channeled through my lens and frozen in time. Take it as you will.

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