About

The cliche of teenager in his bedroom, electric guitar but no amp, playing along to the CDs he loved.

Went to music school for studio engineering (not performance, not composition). Probably learned the most about it at home making electronic music to share with my roommate.

Got a real job. Several. Made a couple of half-finished demo tracks at home.

Started exploring creating Flash sites (anyone remember those?). I started just as a distraction to make a site for my music while feeling uninspired. Found the process really creatively stimulating. The blank canvas, the visuals, the scripting of animations and interactions. Yes, the web is a much better place without those kinds of sites, but also so bland. Sites used to be such works of art.

Fell into coding full-stack web apps as a hobby, then as a job and career.

Took a ten year creative hiatus. No music. No art. No side projects.

Got briefly, wildly inspired by "generative art", made a couple of cool things, and then life happened again. Back to the hiatus.

Went to see ZZ Top live (thank you, Vanessa), and fell in love with guitar again. Started playing again. Rented a room in a rehearsal space so I could have somewhere to play an amp (got my first amp).

Upgraded my amp and got my first "real" guitar. Bought and sold and traded a lot of things and got lost in the exploration and the noise. After not too long, moved out of the rehearsal space into an office space I could work from and somewhat justify the rent expense. The office morphed into a simple home studio.

Under "In The Red Deeps", released my first EP, "A Distance". When I was doing music in college, you had to manufacture CDs and go to stores to convince them to give up some shelf space for you. By now, anyone with an email address could upload to Spotify or Apple Music. Society's loss was my gain.

"In The Red Deeps" released its first album, "A Sober Hope", followed by an EP in 2023 and in 2025.

Made a different kind of music. Piano-led rather than guitar-led. Released this under my name, under "David Alex McClain". Followed by an EP in 2022 and an album in 2024.

Bought a nice mirrorless camera and a big lens. Didn't do much with it (as it so often goes), until 2024 when I caught the photography bug pretty bad and became quite insufferable.

Decided to abandon a lot of old ideas I had about there being different versions of me, or different seasons of me, and just embrace this whole mess as one thing. One person, one pair of eyes, hands, and ears, trying to create, because... creating just seems like my default state.

Started a Patreon too because I feel that is a place where I go to learn and be inspired and hear about everyone else's messy process and mistakes. I'm obsessed with the process and the mistakes, the why and the how. I want to document my own whys and hows.