Introducing Neon Buffalo — "So Tired"
This is Neon Buffalo. Short, groovy electronic tracks. Danceable, a little weird. I’ll be figuring this out as we go.
What’s in a name?
Neon Buffalo is a symbol of the authentic life — in the existentialist sense. An ideal to strive for. Designing and building the life that’s actually yours, figuring out what that means, and being bold enough to take the risks to make it happen.
I love this quote from Terence McKenna:
Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.
For me, this means committing to music and doubling down. I fell in love with it as a teenager — wrote songs after school to process the day. After a decade of prioritizing other things, I’m back. The measure of success is completing the process: releasing every 4-6 weeks and not stopping.
This track
“So Tired” came together in one day. I’d spent a couple weekends building a sound palette with Pigments (synthesizer) and Ableton (audio software), and suddenly everything clicked. A year of slowly easing into music, passively consuming youtube content on music production, culminated in a single session. I think my mind was ready for a creative outlet again.
It has some punk energy. I think a lot of us are feeling it right now — the political violence, the economic squeeze, the sense that the people in charge are out of ideas. Feelings of depression and anxiety aren’t edge cases anymore. This track has some of that angst. I promise I’ll make some uplifting ones too.
One constraint I solved
My weakness as a musician has always been my vocals. I have a unique voice, but I’m not a great technical singer. To hit my release schedule, I wanted to do the vocals myself rather than coordinate with vocalists or spend months waiting for samples to clear. I found this plugin called OVox — a vocal synthesizer from Waves. The pitch correction and vocoder sheen solved the limitation. I’m excited to keep experimenting with vocal approaches.
Thank you for listening.
🩷 Ben