In Which Our Hardy Guest Contributor Recalls the Genesis of His Very Own Compact Disc

I Was, We All Were, And Now This

by Nicholas Freilich

Two summers ago, after my first year of law school, I lived at home and was unemployed. A few of my 1L classmates had secured work at law firms, mostly as diversity hires or future summa-cum-laudes, while the rest were proving to their future employers that they cared about the law by working at whatever legal service would hire them. Nobody wanted to hire me because I had long hair and my extra-curricular activities were limited to my law school’s theater group and intramural basketball. They also sensed that I had better things to do with my time. They were correct.

50 Tracks in 50 (Week)days – Summer of 2005

Nick holding it down for the intermural win!

As an exercise to test my mettle, I resolved to write fifty pieces of music over the course of ten weeks. Each day I woke up, drank two or three glasses of water (as part of my ‘natural’ colonic cleansing regimen), and spent between five and seven hours with my computer, a keyboard, and Reason. The output quality ranged from ‘file under D for Donut’ to ‘better than the original Batman theme.’ Most tracks fell somewhere in between.

As someone raised on film scores, my aim was not just to make music, but also to capture images without using words. Once I had settled on an idea – usually after laying down a single musical line – I’d save the file I was working on and give it a name based on what I’d composed to that point. Afterwards, I would focus on composing toward the file’s title. For example, I thought that a slow ascending bass-line in 7/4 sounded like the beginning of a magical transformation, so I called the file “A Dog Becomes a Flower.” That track didn’t make the album.

At the end of the summer I had written about twenty tracks that I thought had a future, more than enough for an album. The idea of actually making an album, however, was far from my head. I just kept burning demo CDs and giving them to friends for them to enjoy. CDs were cheep and I wanted to share the music. I didn’t just say, however, “hey – here’s my music.” I said “Hey – here are the Epicte Demos.”

The Name

“You’ve got to know your natural self and be true to it.”

– Adam Bernstein, Asst. Director MSG Merchandising, quoting Epictetus, the great Stoic philosopher.

While making Skeeter Hammond, my senior project, a film about a recluse basketball player who understood physics and just so happened to have been born in my home town and raised by my jazz piano teacher, I recruited Brown history teacher Ken Sacks to portray Adam Bernstein. During his story, he quoted Epictetus. He was talking about Skeeter at the time, not about me, but the quote stuck in my head and has remained something of a backburner mantra for me.

When I got around to picking my musical moniker I toyed with names like Instupiculous Rex and Magical Amazing. Sadly, the names had nothing to do with my relationship with the pursuit of music and everything to do with my desire to sell as few albums as possible. Eventually I came upon the artist Diplo and was certain that his name was the abbreviation of a Greek philosopher (I later found out it was an abbreviation for Diplodocus, a sauropod from the Jurassic period – go figure!). I figured, if the guy who helped M.I.A. become famous could steal a name from the Greeks, so could I. So I took my name from a guy who held that our aim was to be masters of our own lives and chopped off the ‘tus.’ Ep-ik-tee.

The idea that I was taking control of my life that summer – choosing music over the pursuit of law – propelled me throughout the 50-in-50 exercise. It was then, for the first time ever, that I believed I could live, at least partially, the life of a composer.

Nick with relative. Niece? Cousin? Sister.

Carpe Momentum – The Album

Throughout the summer I became close to an old friend from high school, composer Jed Smith (know in the industry as Betafish). He was fond of the music I was making and suggested that I put out an album. I didn’t think the process was as simple as just ‘putting out an album’ so I shied away from the prospect for a while. After writing a few Mickey Mouse tracks that lacked the spirit of my summer work, I shelved my musical pursuits and spent the bulk of my efforts in my second year of school tending to overwhelming personal problems. A loved one’s suicide just before Thanksgiving sent me into an existential spiral that lasted for months. I was directionless and wanted to drop out and move as far away from everything as possible.

Numerous sessions on the couch and the support of friends and family helped me back on my feet and during a cross-country airplane ride I composed what would eventually be track three from the album, “Carpe Momentum.” At first it was just an IDM-style track driven by competing marimba and vibraphone lines. Near my birthday, however, I received three voicemails infused with both concern for my well-being and the suggestion that I keep moving forward. I dropped the messages onto the music and was inspired by the results to resume composing.

In December of 2006 Jed and his girlfriend Amanda (LA-area DJ, Brammalltram) helped me pick and master twelve tracks and by April the CD – Epicte (self-titled debuts are so in!) – was available through numerous online retailers. A fan of old-school procedures, I went through the trouble of designing an album case and released my CD as a hard-copy. I even made a website. Holla!

‘Nicholas Freilich, Juris Doctorate’ – The Future

A week ago I graduated law school and find myself for the first time without a definite sense of what is to come. I intend to market the album door-to-door this summer while all my classmates are studying for the Bar Exam. Once I’ve sold half the CDs cluttering my room, I’ll get to work on a second album – something along the lines of LCD-Soundsystem- meets-Steve-Reich – that I intend to call Four on the Floor. I’d like to release the album before the next season of Lost starts. Given how far away that event feels, dropping a new album seems a reasonable goal.

Nicholas Freilich graduated Georgetown Law School in 2007. A graduate of Brown University, he’s on a long road trip to his hometown of Los Angeles, California.

You can buy a copy of the album through the Epicte website, or through CDBaby. You can listen to unreleased tracks at myspace.

“Johnny, The Cliche-Busting Robot” — Epicte

“Vase Lines” — Epicte”

“The Sun Also Spirals” — Epicte