Flag Day 2024

Little sweetheart, today is a funny little holiday called Flag Day. I always used to see it on the calendar and joke about it but it's kind of neat in its timing - almost the midpoint of the year. I guess the Summer Solstice is more like it but it's halfway through the sixth month. 

Anyway, I wrote a song called "Flag Day", as you'll remember, that year I was out in the Bay Area. You immediately came up with the backing vocals and later that year we recorded it for what was meant to be our first EP but wound up becoming Of Love and Loss. A few years later, re-imagining the songs from that album and including new spoken word narrative and underscoring, we released Sometimes in Dreams. This is that album's version - the Summer Dream version and below is the video for it. 

Thinking of you on this day and everyday. With all my love forever...

Remembering Forever

Little sweetheart, this is the very difficult day each year and I try to think of it not as the day I lost you but as the day you ascended, transcending this earthly plane for the forever one. And that I will meet you there one day, where we will be together at last again and as I will come to see and know we have been forever. 

On that night as we left the hospital, little sweetheart, there was the most amazing celestial event in the sky - a super moon, the Perigee-Syzygy. I wrote this song for you about it, found on our album Sometimes in Dreams. 

How I love you! Forever!

And At That Hour, Above (Perigee-Syzygy) 

 

 

April 25 - pt 1

It’s my birthday, little sweetheart, twinned forever with you for a multitude of reasons but certainly very much so because your memorial was held on the day. 

You and I were meant to be together here in New York working on my play My Before and After, which I’d written so very much with you mind - a big role unimaginable for anyone but yourself. And we had tickets to go see Low in Philadelphia the day itself, on my birthday night. 

Instead, I was speaking at your memorial in San Francisco. 

When we made the Sometimes in Dreams double-album, I revisited, with a couple of edits and additions, what I said that day for you, composed underscoring and putting it together as the centerpiece of that album - The Choral Text Passage. I’m posting a link to it here . 

I’m so grateful for you, my little sweetheart. How I love you! Forever! Forever! 

UK Radio Interview

A got a chance to talk about you for some time tonight, little sweetheart, during a radio interview in the UK. 

A station there, Radio SLE, has several programs that have featured us over the last couple of years. The first of them was in collaboration a while back with the Canadian podcast, Limbocast, that did interviews with me after Deux Anges was released, broadcast the double-album in its entirety and then had us back to talk about Til Morning again last December. 

A couple other shows have picked us up, little sweetheart, and a special one, "Music in Mind", that talks with musicians and composers about their work and issues of health and well-being, asked me a couple weeks ago if they could schedule an hour long interview with me for broadcast today. SLE doesn't archive their broadcasts, so I don't have a link to a recording but I had a very wide ranging and thoughtful chat with their host Frankie Rose. 

We spoke a lot about you, of course - the soul and conscience of Bipolar Explorer, the very reason for its existence and continuation - and she opened and closed the show with songs from Sometimes in Dreams: "You Are Loved (Summer's Theme)" at the top of the hour and "Our Oneness Can Never Be Erased" at its end. 

As ever, it's all for you. Listen, little sweetheart - you're on the radio! 

With all my love forever.   

The Choral Text Passage

Little sweetheart, when we first began working on Sometimes in Dreams, I knew that its centerpiece had to be based on something of those words I had written for you ten years ago. 

The two previous albums, Electric Hymnal and Dream Together had both incorporated spoken word with underscoring but Sometimes was the work that most fully integrated it, finally, I think, and that marked that aspect of our sound going forward and to this very day.  

The piece for Sometimes became "The Choral Text Passage", with the text itself a bit longer, adding a few other thoughts, underscored with guitars and spoken, as the title might suggest, with multiple voices sometimes joining in counterpoint or unison with the main narrative one. It's here, below. 

Love you forever.

 THE CHORAL TEXT PASSAGE (from Sometimes in Dreams)

 

Thoughts tonight

 So many thoughts of you tonight, my little sweetheart. And I'll try to get to them all soon. But just happened across this video, tonight, one of our best, I think. With all my love forever.

 

 

June 14th

Little sweetheart, it’s Flag Day.

Such a random little holiday I know but I always think of it just about being the mid point of the year. And of course I wrote that song of the same title about the very thing that first year I was out in the Bay Area trying to find work and be closer to you, geographically. I always wear my Black Flag tee on June 14th and I did today.

Of course, as ever, you are in my every thought. The last video we did - even though we’ve more recent songs from Til Morning - is the one for Flag Day, the Summer Dream version with your vocals way out front. We released it on your birthday last year. I’ve been watching it tonight, so I’ll put it up here, as well.

It’s actually just about your half birthday (May 13th, to be exact) so maybe that makes it extra appropriate. I love you!

Another Trip Around The Sun

It's my birthday, little sweetheart, and this day will be forever twinned with the words I said for you on this very day nine years ago, as our souls are twinned and one forever. I love you so very much.

https://bipolarexplorer.bandcamp.com/track/the-choral-text-passage

German Radio

Little sweetheart, you’re on the radio!

Over the weekend, the band made its German Radio debut. Radio TFSC featured “Flag Day (Summer Dream Version)” - which I think is our favorite mix of the song because your vocals are way up front and it has the backwards guitar on it - and then added it to their rotation along with another track featuring your central vocals, “No Answer”, both from our double-album, Sometimes in Dreams.

I don’t know yet if this station archives their broadcasts to MixCloud, but if so, I’ll get a link up to the programs right away.

With all my love…

Dutch Radio

You’re on the radio, little sweetheart! In The Netherlands! Last month we heard from a Dutch radio program that very much liked last year’s double-album Sometimes in Dreams, and tonight they let us know they were going to feature one go the tracks on the air last night. Radio Hoogveen is the Dutch station and the program, De Mist, plays mostly post-rock.

They broadcast “Never” from disc one. The intro and back announce weren’t in English so I’m not entirely sure what he said but I think it was good! Ha!

In all earnestness, I got very emotional. I hadn’t heard the track in a while, maybe since we were working so assiduously on the album prior to its release. My heart immediately soared to you, as it often does. You are always in my thoughts, little sweetheart. And tonight you’re on the air! In The Netherlands! With all my love forever.

Soaring! Ascension!

Little sweetheart, we got a surprise tonight. We thought the guys from the London radio show, Sonic Imperfections, on Resonance FM were going to play a track or two from Sometimes in Dreams, and we are assured that they will be in an upcoming program, but instead they played the closing track from our album, Dream Together - "To The Other Half of the Sky".

It's one of our most personal songs, little sweetheart, and nearly eleven minutes long. It took up quite a chunk of their broadcast. They said incredibly lovely things, too, calling it their favorite and saying it had been on their turntable at home for months.

One of the things that's so powerful about it, of course, is you, little sweetheart. Your soaring vocals, solo, open and close the song that builds and builds and builds and then slowly unwinds, ascending. Below is the video we assembled for it, for you.

I need you more than ever. With all my love...

From London tonight...

Little sweetheart, we've gotten news of quite a lovely review of our album, Til Morning Is Nigh, from London tonight. The review is by Ed Pinsent -  the editor of the long-running UK music zine, The Sound Projector and presenter of the Friday night radio show of the same name on London's Resonance FM. An excerpt below. As always, for you, little sweetheart. All for you.

(excerpt):
NATIVITY GIFT
Bipolar Explorer - "Til Morning Is Nigh" (Slugg Records)
Review by Ed Pinsent, Editor

An unusual and touching album of songs and spoken word from Bipolar Explorer, a band in NYC calling themselves a “dreampop trio”…Til Morning Is Nigh: A Dream Of Christmas (SLUGG RECORDS) offers their versions of various old and obscure carols and Christmas songs from England and France, all sung in an extremely low-key DIY fashion not too far apart from the school of Sebadoh.
 
I’ve never been keen on the term “shoegaze” for this sort of introverted music, but Bipolar Explorer happily embrace it and wear it as a badge of pride. The album is interspersed with spoken word elements and recitation, all in French, all similarly unassuming – telling the Christmas story, in tones that are reassuring and sincere. The entire album is programmed to “segue”, meaning all 23 tracks are delivered in a continuous rush, and the aim is to create an impression of a radio broadcast “drifting over the late night airwaves”.
 
By now you may have formed an impression of the romantic and poetical sensibilities of Michael Serafin-Wells and Summer Serafin, plus their French protégé Sylvia Solanas (who joins them) with this new record that beguiles rather than overwhelms the listener.
 
Enchanted by dreams and dream-worlds, the themes of the oneiric life of slumberland and night visions regularly surface in their work. Indeed the album before this was called Sometimes In Dreams.
 
There’s a tragic dimension to the band’s history too, since band member Summer Serafin passed away in 2011, leaving partner Michael to carry on the project; and he’s pretty dedicated to preserving her memory, through photographs and texts – and even recordings of her voice, which continue to appear; she’s on this record.  He bears this tragedy with humility and acceptance.
 
Maybe tragedy is one of the hallmarks of Bipolar Explorer’s music; Michael himself nearly joined the angelic choir recently, suffering heart failure outside the hospital he’d just been released from, after being hit by a car.
 
Let’s hope he sticks around long enough to keep making music, as this album is a tiny gem; its simplicity can’t help but win you over, and its sincerity pours out of every moment. The record becomes mesmerizing and fascinating through repetition. In sum, voices, instruments and production all come together with lashings of heart and soul.
 
Intended to be heard all the year round, but now I’m looking forward to playing it at Christmas.
 
-Ed Pinsent
Editor, The Sound Projector - London



(Article in full here)

On This Day...

It's my birthday, little sweetheart. My best ones were always with you. And your memorial was, incredibly, also held on this day. The words I wrote and spoke for you that day are always on my mind and last year, expanded and with underscoring, they were weaved into our album Sometimes in Dreams as the track, "The Choral Text Passage".

It's here: https://bipolarexplorer.bandcamp.com/track/the-choral-text-passage

Love you forever.

Necessary Weight

Thinking of you, little sweetheart. Today and always. Praying and longing for you.

Last night, before bed, I assembled and we released this morning this video of "Necessary Weight" (from Sometimes in Dreams) for you.

Love you forever.

Video for "Our Oneness Can Never Be Erased"

Little sweetheart, I've been a bit remiss in assembling videos for the new albums. I very much wanted to do some for SOMETIMES IN DREAMS, but events, including getting run over by a car, delayed my efforts.

Finally, there's the first of them completed. It's for "Our Oneness Can Never Be Erased" and is up on our YouTube channel and the Slugg Records website. It's also here below.

And, as ever, all for you, my gorgeous girl. Love you forever!

The Comfort of Ritual

I’ve been reading, little sweetheart, and looking at the illustrations of an artist and author who lost his wife to cancer just a little over a year ago. He has two little girls to raise in her absence and while their grief is palpable and ever-present, there is also a kind of faith and eternal love equally forefront in all his work, as he tells his story day to day.

One recent post that caught my eye was how he had come to enjoy cooking and how it provided a great feeling of comfort. His experience is a bit different than ours - his wife was the cook for many years and it’s only now that he’s taken up the mantel - but the feeling of comfort is the same.

One of my favorite things to do ever was to cook for you. One time when a friend was visiting you here and the two of you were going to go out for a drink for a couple of hours to catch up before returning home, I was just taking dessert out of the oven and putting dinner in. She just looked at you and said “You get to come home to this? You’re so lucky!”.

I think she was wrong, though - I’m the lucky one, little sweetheart. And cooking now, be it for Sylvia or for your parents when I visit them or even just most nights when I’m here on my own, reminds me so much of you, and cooking for you and sitting down with you and having dinner together.

So many of our rituals remain and they comfort me, little sweetheart, in knowing that you are nearer than I can imagine. With all my love forever. 

Review from France...

There’s a beautiful review this morning, little sweetheart, of both the 2018 albums - Sometimes in Dreams and Til Morning Is Nigh -  from France. Citing you by name, of course, and some of the songs most bound up in your beautiful spirit, they call the new album “Dreamlike, luminous and enchanting” and have much to say about Sometimes, as well. I’m posting the full link in French below but here’s a translated excerpt:

“We couldn't talk about 2018 without mentioning Bipolar Explorer. The New York dreampop/shoegaze duo continues to deliver. Once again, the couple Summer Serafin (spoken word, vocals) and Michael Serafin-Wells (guitar, bass, percussion, tape loops, vocals, spoken word) send the listener into a parallel yet reassuring universe with Sometimes In Dreams. With this double album, Bipolar Explorer bring us with them diving into their intimacy in the most solemn and purest way possible.  Alternating between Summer Serafin's spoken word passages and Michael Serafin-Wells's emotional flights of lyricism, the New York duo astounds us beauty. Both cathartic and luminous, this eighth album of the New York couple puts shoegaze back into a state of grace…”
 - Les Oreilles Curieuses

As ever, my little sweetheart, it’s all for you. All for you, my gorgeous girl.




Les Oreilles Curieuses full review

Words and Music

One of the things I meant to post on April 25 - my birthday and the anniversary of your memorial - was this track from the new album Sometimes in Dreams.

It obviously is inspired by what I wrote and spoke for you that day in 2011. It includes much of what I said that night and goes deeper with new writing and thoughts and musical underscoring, as has become the way of us. I love you my angel.

I have a thousand thousand things to say...

The Choral Text Passage 


(from Bipolar Explorer's double-album, Sometimes in Dreams - c/p Serafin-Wells, Thirteen November Music ASCAP and Slugg Records)

From France...

Little sweetheart, the new album got the most lovely review in France. And so very much of it is about you. The article is in French below but also the English translation sent me by the author, Indiemusic Associate Editor Raphael Duprez.

https://www.indiemusic.fr/2018/01/02/bipolar-explorer-sometimes-in-dreams/

Raphael Duprez, Associate Editor, Indiemusic (France) - 2 January 2018 (translated):

One year ago, Bipolar Explorer’s record “Dream Together” moved us to tears and sounded like a musical farewell, as well as a last goodbye, but also, an unstoppable wish not to let absence become the most oppressive feeling in (composer/band co-founder, Michael Serafin-Wells’) life. Remembrances matter, as they always do with Bipolar Explorer. And through “Sometimes in Dreams” the project reaches an upper level into emotion and confidence, transfiguring the everlasting link between two inseparable soulmates and creators. In this new work, Summer and Michael chart a course that follows an inspired and enlightening way of composing - illuminating nostalgia as a powerful, precious and human strength  - to offer us so many fascinating and sincere songs, all destined to be unforgettable and essential to our own lives. Have no doubt, this is a major record.
The dearest human beings are the ones we cherish the chance to meet and talk to when we most feel the urge to do so, spend hours writing one another and focusing on every word in reply. Michael suffered, but survived. Bipolar Explorer is a perfect reflection of this humanity; a honest, pure and helpful presence.
 
A guileless and urgent art of melodies, tunes and vocals thread their way and lead us lovingly through “Sometimes in Dreams”  and, in the depths of the record, Summer, his muse, his eternal love, talks to him and us as she never did before. But Summer never looks or sounds like a ghost: she stands right in front of us, holding her lover’s hand as they both look at us, smiling. She then lays her eyes on him, sings with him, creates and changes into a remarkable source of inspiration for their new double-LP; an eternal piece of work, divided into different chapters but as homogenous as welcoming us to explore BPX’s parallel universes and lands.
 
Summer is always here, close to Michael and us. Her voice resonates through the first tunes of the record, and will shine more and more as we travel into a wonderful and moving musical world. Never with even a thought to erase her presence, Michael creates an intense but devoted melodic canvas during two hours that are flowing nearly too fast for us, as we all feel comfortable and at peace with what we are listening and enjoying. A complete immersion explodes in our souls: distortion on “Letter to the Darkest Star” and astonishing natural movements on “Ocean” invite us to swim in clear and warm waters. ‘Sometimes in Dreams’ is an album about life, its difficulties but, most of all, all that makes us go forward, whatever may happen : “Phantom Limb” and “Out” stare at the vaporous veils of desire and the constant need to be with our beloved ones, as “Necessary Weight” changes pain into the origin of redemption and the acceptance of our mourning.
 
On the second part of the record, “Thousand Thousand Summer” is probably the most passionate track; a vocal obsession changing into a cathartic hypnosis, then leading to the overwhelming song “The Choral Text Passage (Summerlove)” which breaks our mental barriers as well as Michael’s when he went through his oppressive loss. “Sometimes in Dreams” is a staging of the union of souls, troubles and inspirations; a hidden book, lost in the multiple bookshelves of an imaginary bookstore, but the only one we can find in a glimpse of an eye, as it is shining and calling us.
 
The final words of “Lost Life” are the most perfect way to end up talking about “Sometimes in Dreams”; so, time to let Bipolar Explorer express an ultimate motivation to think, feel and live. Summer and Michael’s tenderness, confidence and friendship are spiritually and melodically intense, and we can’t thank them enough for what they give us, year after year.
 
Perfect ending: “In this moment she appeared to him. In this waking hour he saw and could see. Overcome with emotion he understood at last. She beckoned and he returned to her joyfully, as she said, simply... now!”

Bipolar Explorer’s “Sometimes in Dreams” is available from 1 January 2018 on Slugg Records.

Sometimes in Dreams

The new album, our seventh, a double-album, Sometimes in Dreams, is released today, little sweetheart. As ever, it is of, for and about you. I'm so proud of and grateful to and for you. I will always love you and be ever watchful for your guiding presence.

Below is a little something I wrote for inclusion in the CD's booklet. A liner note dedication. You, my darling, remain the reason for it all. My reason. My conscience. The other half of my soul.

With all my love forever.

This album, conceived as a live art installation work, began as an internal demo for the band and our collaborators. With me in New York, our narrator in California and our visual artists in far flung places, it began as a shared sonic document of how the piece might unfold once we were all in the same room. As circumstances changed, we began to think of it differently. The concept for performance remained the same but the idea of making an entirely new double-album, revisiting and reimagining the songs from "Of Love and Loss", seamlessly interweaving them with the spoken word narrative, began to emerge. We already had an eye toward doing a live album of "Of Love" as performed with the narration but this became something else - an original sonic experience in its own right. Each disc gapless, a continuous flow of music and words like a dreamy late night transmission from some far away radio station that only comes over the air in the wee hours as you lay half asleep in bed. (We must admit we are hugely romantic about radio. Listening in the dark to BBC 3 & 4 or the great WFMU is kind of our idea of bliss.) We still see this album as the blueprint for the live arts work we conceived it for in collaboration with a visual artist. This booklet is meant to allude to and suggest that very thing. But there's also something about slipping on some nice headphones, turning the lights down and the volume up and letting this take you somewhere. We hope you will. As ever this album is for Summer - my partner, my best friend, my soulmate, my true love. God knows, she took me somewhere. She led me here. And I believe with all my heart she will lead me back to her side in The Forever. With all my love...

Michael Serafin-Wells
New York City
January 2018