blog – phlwest

2 July 2025

Music I Love to Love to

Music serves as memory – in 2023 I started making a new Playlist for every new month – new music, old songs that I fall in love with again, songs from the previous month I didn’t get enough of. No rules; a soundscape for a month.

A Playlist as time capsule – revisiting these tracks, in that specific order as a way of going back in time, to a different version of me.

Warhol did this with perfumes – a different one for each month, smell is connected to memory for him, to me it’s music. Sticking with that. My songwriting as my own personalized time capsules – revisiting, journaling.

At some point I might share some of these monthly soundscapes, for now I’m giving you another update of LOVE: a playlist reflecting my current state of mind, ideas. Inspiration, daily listening. Generally updated once a month as well, but more curated towards continuous listening, more cohesive. In tune with the music I am currently releasing. I hope you love this iteration as much as I do.

I wanted to talk a few songs that I’ve been into.

HEAVEN
Melody follows chord progression so inexplicably new and familiar, you know what’s coming but you don’t. Great songwriting.

UN DEUX
cortex found such a unique sound – another banger.

CANDY
Interpolation of milkshake done queer – also Claudia is hot.

SIMPLE GIRL
Great introduction to Remy Bond. She updates Abba soundscapes and brings great songwriting.

CHEMICAL REACTION
If she had bigger marketing budget this would be a #1 hit. Great Pop.

FAME IS A GUN
The synth.

ZAGGA DAT
The song cool the video cool she so fucking cool.

POGO
Let’s just fuck to this.

23 June 2025

Last Light Live Piano Version

Last Light was born at the piano, like most of my songs. The melody as a reminder of what love looks like – it came quick, as opposed to the lyrics that took a while to perfect.

I am proud of songs that work in this way – no fancy production that can hide songwriting issues or weak melodies. I love the simplicity and rawness of just voice plus piano. I believe it works well for Last Light.

I hope you enjoy.

11 June 2025

Last Light Is Out Now!

My new single Last Light is out now on all streaming platforms. Listen anywhere.

Trust that essential connection is with another human being. This track, Last Light, began with a phrase: We wasted the Last Light on us both.

It hadn’t clicked yet, I wasted it on a simple video, until one of y’all got back to me, mentioning its truth, connection, reality. I realised this was a song waiting to be written.

Waste the last light on us two /
It feels good being with you /
Doing it all with you

Waste the last light on us two /
It’s warm inside you /
That does good to us two

Picnic with your ass out, quarter burnt cigarettes, grass longing for touch, centuries of understanding, thick armpit hair, lighters without fluid, stars drowned by faint city lights, fallen trees around forests, hard techno in the distance: kids, thick unmoving air, buzzing: mosquitoes.

It all came together as if the song had been waiting to be written, waiting for me to extract it out of the air, the air around us, the air around you and me, the air unmoving.

It would mean the world to me if you checked Last Light out, if you let it into your life, if you found a way to incorporate it into your own playlists, your life.

I know Playlists can be very personal, very unique to a certain mood. I feel like Last Light is special; melancholic, optimistic. I hope it works for your life – i hope you listen.

LOVE, forever

phlwest.

If you wanna check out my Playlist, including some of my newest inspiration and coolest sounds, check out LOVE:

21 May 2025

Pretty Pretty Is Out Now!

My new single Pretty Pretty is out right now. You can listen to it anywhere, on all streaming platforms.

This is the first single off my project LOVE, forever. If you want to know more about LOVE, forever, go ahead and check out my last Blog.

I’m excited about Pretty Pretty – this song came together in a flash, like a moment you have with a person, maybe only once in your life. Your only aim: extend these seconds, stretch them, live in them as long as possible. Hear the echoes as far as possible, be one with the aftermath, good or bad.

I had no choice but to work on this track day and night – get it finished as soon as possible, keep the energy. No good in losing that energy working on a song, ’cause the energy is most important, it conveys through space and time; only music can do that. Something about the way I wrote this just made a whole lot of fucking sense, I was able to capture that energy.

Usually tracks take lots of time for me, not Pretty Pretty. Everything came to me in a flash, and I was able to put pen to paper and notes to Cubase in a suprisingly short amount of time.

The Need For Depth

This song is unusual for me – I’ve come to realize that I’m pretty hard on myself in trying to provide deep and meaningful lyrics. I want to make the best, the most referential, intelligent and unique and interesting music that I am capable of creating. That usually means trying to create sonic vibes in metaphorical ways.

In writing and producing Pretty Pretty I realized that there is merit in creating something stupid and simple as well. I learned that being blunt and open and confronting you guys with what’s on my mind directly doesn’t necessarily take away from the music or the art form. It’s simply a different way of approaching music.

An evolution in a way. This opened my eyes to the possibility of being frank, more direct, something I’m struggling with and have been struggling with not only in art but also in life. This definitely won’t mean all music going forward will be simple, in fact, the next song I’ve just finished working on today is more metaphorical and more intricate in ways, however Pretty Pretty opened up the possibility of doing this at all. It’s been a great exercise in songwriting and a greater exercise in giving less fucks.

Maybe the idea of trying to be more deep and intricate comes from being queer, a need to codify, a need to hide what we do, who we are. This bluntness is new to me, it feels liberating.

I’ve learned that I want to be more blunt with my existence, cause we deserve to talk sucking dick just as passionately as straight artists deserve talking eating pussy. I want to continue evolving into somebody living, talking, being truthful to both you and me, and our idea of life.

Endless Evolution

An excess of honesty in this world, maybe it can connect us more, without a need to hide. Also, a way of understanding each other: simpler language, less confusion. Something I usually work against, I love the grey areas, I love writing lyrics that y’all are able to interpret for yourself, so that there is room for you, so that you can insert yourself into situations that resonate with you, so that there is a space for you, in between my own words. To find hidden meaning with the hundredth listen, to come back to a song after years and seeing everything in different light, due to your very self changing.

That is the main way I make music, and I will continue to do so. Pretty Pretty is an experiment, a shot at something simple, straight forward. Usually this would end up on a harddrive on some random shelf in my basement, never to be heard again. I just felt like I owed it to myself to explore this way of working. And at the end of the day I’m proud of Pretty Pretty, it’s a different type of proud than I am of my usual songs.

Ultimately I want to make music that you listen to – that is the end goal for me. I want to make music that connects, makes you think, makes you feel, dance or love. So who’s to judge a song if it achieves just that?

LOVE, forever

phlwest.

6 May 2025

LOVE, forever

Together We Are Love is more than a distant memory still, more than those 14 songs; a way of being – and we’ll continue being love. You and me. These songs are with me still, I hope they’re with you in one way or another, to live to, to be rediscovered on old playlists in five years time. Music moves quickly nowadays, and if you’re constantly on the hunt for new, old loses shine. It will reappear if you love hard enough.

All good things come in two, and the best come in three, and even though that means less space in bed, less sleep, those memories are worth it. I’m working on singles now, but the thought of a continuation, an evolution of Together We Are Love fuels insomnia. I want to create, release as much as possible, without confinement, without ‘album mode’ at the back of my mind. At least for a while – I want standalone songs, I want continuation.

To combine the two I came up with the idea for a project I’m calling

LOVE, forever

This will be a collection of songs, of singles, that continue the thoughts I’ve been dreaming with Together We Are Love, yet allowing me to be more spontaneous, more free, more experimental and more intimate. Love lasts forever once you feel it, and these songs do too. If they’re with you, if they’ve made their way onto a playlist, into your heart; immortality. Love, Forever.

An idea out of necessity; I don’t know where this will take us, but this chapter is called Love, Forever. I don’t know how many songs I’ll make, or how long it will take, maybe endless. We’ll be finding out together, cause we are love, love forever.

Pretty Pretty is the first song of this project and it feels the way I’ve promised myself to be: more free, more experimental. Usually I would dismiss the idea that led to Pretty Pretty, ’cause it is simplistic and doesn’t contain much lyrical depth.

The more I been thinking about this, I realize that there is worth in that. There is life to immediacy, bluntness. Honesty.

I felt that I just wanted to say what was on my mind. Without the need to color it with metaphors or depth, references or style. And since the hook is catchy as fuck I decided not to be my own worst enemy – and continue to pursue this spur of the moment track – it came together quickly, which is very unlike me. I love it for what it is, and I am happy to be able to stand behind it. This is evolution – in a way.

Ultimately all I wanna do is make music that people actually listen to, and this track feels like something people wanna listen to. You’ve given me that feedback.

I’ll be talking more about Pretty Pretty in the release post, just remember it’s coming this Friday, May 09th!

I’m excited to be working in the studio again, on new music. New lyrics and productions have been forming throughout the push for We Are Love anyway, and I’m excited to be acting on them now.

I know I’m ready, see you friday.

Love, forever,

phlwest.

11 April 2025

Life As Art - Night Echoes - Out Now

All these countless nights spent alone, making music; producing, writing, mixing, listening, testing – under night skies, with visions of something greater in mind, something more beautiful.

I do not want to be alone, anymore.

I want to take you with me, take you through my work, take you through my process.

This is Life As Art.

This first video has been in the making for a long while – I needed to figure out how I could best translate what I had in mind into video. I am proud of what I came up with – this first one takes you through my process of working on a demo, listening to it around the city, making ‘Heaven Hell’ and perfecting it in my studio.

This format will be anything, BTS of my work, my art, my life, song releases, deep dives, anything I want it to be.

I’m forever grateful to you who watch and who want to get to know more lore of these songs, which I will be talking about in depth.

I hope this series can be a visual expansion of the blog, a way for me to connect with you and a way for me to show off the work that I put into my art. There’ll be exclusive songs, previews, some leaks. I want to push this series with everything I have, hopefully you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.

I’ve got so much on my mind and I am grateful to have found this way of sharing it with you, visually.

Love, forever,

phl.

26 February 2025

Together Magazine Edition 02 is out right now

I’ve been working long and hard at creating another Edition of Together Magazine, after the first one was such a success. In this Edition you’ll find:

Live Performances of Rented and Us
Exclusive and Uncensored Images
Over 1 Hour of Audio Interviews
Exclusive Images and Polaroids
Behind The Scenes Look into the way I work
In-Depth Deep Dive into my Songwriting Process
Access to Private Instagram Story for more Behind the Scenes Content

And so much more.

Been gathering pieces of love left on the cutting room floor, curating, pushing and pulling for all that love to make it to daylight. There is lots and lots of work left out of a final project – WE ARE LOVE – in this case.

Work that is neither bad nor undeserving, simply not fitting in the final album. It was important to me to rework those pieces into something digestible, something that makes sense, something that shows the endless amounts of care that is put into every piece of art I create. I found Together Magazine to be the perfect place for all of that.

Poetry that evolved into lyrics, poetry that made its way into the album, poetry that exists because it deserves to.

My art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, real life evolves into music and this magazine is created from real life as well.

The late night conversations that end up as lyrics months later. The technical studio setups that somehow feel romantic when it’s just me and the music. It’s all the stuff around the album that made the album possible. It’s also documentation, conversation, making all of that something worth looking at.

It would mean the world to me if you checked it out, purchased it if you can and shared it with somebody you love. I put a lot of work into all of this, including the exclusive live performances, photoshoots I did specifically for that magazine and all the audios I created to let you closer into my world.

Love you endless, phlwest.

iiii

Music I Love to Love to

Last Light Live Piano Version

Last Light Is Out Now!

Pretty Pretty Is Out Now!

The Need For Depth

Endless Evolution

LOVE, forever

Life As Art - Night Echoes - Out Now

Together Magazine Edition 02 is out right now

TERMS

IMPRESSUM

HELP