I first knew Brandon Locher as a visual artist, constantly floored by his drawings and the depth and detail he created with colored pencils. I don’t remember how we first connected, but earlier this year I was excited to take part in his Ongoing Solos project. When he shared his album, Rahu Ketu, over the summer, I was, again, floored. It’s an immense, enchanting sonic diary. Like his drawings, these works are intricate and playful, colorful worlds for listeners to absorb and explore. And if that wasn’t enough, The Shadow Planets EP followed shortly, an extension into further realms.
Every time I put this music on, I vacillate between overwhelm and attentive calm and focus. Usually the former melting into the latter. Bright serenades float on a bed of cloud-like pads etched with pointillist harmonic boundaries. Details layered on details; melodies pushed into every open space. It all becomes a lithe matrix bending and swaying with the evolving rhythms, a veritable aural playground built from subdued drama fused with radiant hymns. Both Rahu Ketu and The Shadow Planets leave a luminous path.
Locher released both via his imprint, Shared Materials, and via Bandcamp.
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What are some of your earliest memories of music and sound, something that has stuck with you for all these years?
I have a memory of listening to “Red Red Wine” by UB40 while riding in the backseat of a car. I must have been roughly three or four years old, but the merging of the music, the breeze coming through the open windows, and the scenery buzzing past is a wonderful memory. I also have memories of watching the music videos for Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” on MTV and becoming completely hypnotized by “Sledgehammer.” I would dance and completely freak out, fascinated by the interplay between music and claymation. I have similar memories of experiencing all the different sounds in Pee-wee’s Playhouse: electronic zaps, boings, doorbells and cuckoo alarm clocks, honks and more zaps, all of these strange and bizarre sounds that somehow felt very musical to me. I remember, as a freshman in high school, reading The Listening Book: Discovering Your Own Music by W. A. Mathieu. Without knowing the work of John Cage, I would pause while reading and simply listen to all the sounds surrounding me outside. Sometimes, I’ll listen to an album and hear musical sounds and ideas that I’ve never heard before, things that seem so profound that I know these new experiences will continue to stick with me for years to come.
So you’re perhaps best known for your work as a visual artist. You’ve been doing that for decades now, and this is your first record under your own name in six years. What made this feel like the right time to step back into music and sound?
In 2020, I released EP2, which consisted mostly of material recorded between 2016 and 2018, during the sessions that produced EP1. So, in a sense, it had been roughly ten years since I had actively written or recorded music. But that doesn’t mean music was absent from my life. In fact, it’s almost the complete opposite. I was listening to and thinking about music almost constantly throughout that time. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi often uses the analogy of pulling a bow and arrow back fully before releasing it. By drawing it all the way back, you build the potential for the arrow to travel as far as possible. I think of that extended period away from making music in a similar way. It was a kind of prolonged silence, a period of pulling back and waiting patiently until the moment felt right to let go. In retrospect, Rahu Ketu feels like the release and expression of that accumulated energy.
Before digging into the new music itself, I wanted to ask about Shared Materials, your imprint. I love this idea of it operating outside of the scope of music as something to be bought and sold, but instead something to use, remix, and create shared experiences. What pulled you toward that idea and releasing this new body of work inside that framework instead of a more conventional label?
Making this music was such a deep and gratifying experience, one of the most beautiful experiences of my entire life, that the last thing I wanted was to intermix it with money. I wanted the work to exist outside the usual framework of music as a commodity, where its value is often determined by sales rather than the experience of engaging with it. That became the foundation for Shared Materials: an imprint for music that exists for use, not sale. In a sense, the idea is also anti-copyright, because if the work isn’t being treated as a financial asset, there’s less reason to protect it as property. Rather than treating the music as something to be owned and controlled, I want people to feel free to engage with it on their own terms, to remix it, reinterpret it, and make something of their own from it. All the work is released under a Creative Commons license that allows for this kind of transformation while keeping the resulting works non-commercial and shareable. Having an imprint of my own also gives me a place for all future work that shares this ethos. With each new release, you can see the part or see the whole. Each work exists independently, but as the materials accumulate, the larger body of work continues to develop and evolve. I’m interested in creating something that grows over time, where the individual works contribute to a much larger whole. Ultimately, I want the value of the work to reside in the experiences it creates and the possibilities it opens up for others, rather than in its status as something to be bought and sold. Since I’m able to support a modest life through selling my artwork and visual art commissions, I want my music to exist simply as music, without the expectation that it needs to be sold.
You’ve also practiced Transcendental Meditation for a long time, and have talked about that the idea of time and cycles drew you to Vedic astrology. How did that sort of shift in framing actually change how you make music?
Practicing Transcendental Meditation since 2019 has completely altered my relationship to concentration, silence, patience, and especially the emergence of ideas. I see a direct connection between my meditation practice and the way I now approach creative projects. Over time, TM has become something of a foundational super habit in my life, and through habit stacking, I’ve been able to incorporate many daily activities into a consistent stream of rest and activity. This has helped me cultivate greater clarity of thought and an ability to sustain my concentration on a single point for longer periods of time. My interest in Vedic astrology developed somewhat separately, through reading and studying Vedic texts such as the Upanishads. It introduced another way of thinking about time and cycles, and eventually I began to consider how these ideas might inform my creative practice on the gross physical level. With Rahu Ketu, I wanted to see what would happen if I worked within a period already established by my astrological chart. The 264 days became a very real, tangible part of making the album, and I was interested in seeing what could emerge from working within those set conditions.
You find yourself entering your own Rahu Ketu period (a 264-day cycle, for those unfamiliar!), and used that as a hard boundary for this record. Why did you need an external structure like that instead of just deciding on your own when this record would begin and end?
I like the idea of using time as a material, and there was also a sense of surrender involved in working within a cycle predetermined by my own astrological birth chart. It wasn’t simply a matter of recording an album over 264 days; that specific duration itself became part of the conceptual framework. Additionally, knowing the endpoint was already established allowed me to stop worrying about when the record would be finished and focus entirely on the music itself. Rather than having to decide when the work was complete, I could trust the framework and devote myself to what was actually happening within it.
I love that you came up with the track titles by purposefully omitting the letters that spell “Rahu Ketu,” and your description of that as a linguistic eclipse is great. Where did that idea come from, and how challenging was it working within those constraints? Did it make it more difficult to write toward?
The idea seemed to arise from somewhere deep within myself, somewhere that even the subconscious mind can’t quite reach. All of a sudden, spontaneously and without any effort, the thought simply appeared in my awareness. I can’t even say that I willed it into being; it just arrived. I think this is often how ideas come to the surface. It’s as though an idea begins as a seed at the very foundation of thought, developing until it eventually enters conscious awareness. Omitting the letters that spell “Rahu Ketu” was one of those ideas that seemed to arrive fully formed, and it actually made working within those constraints almost effortless. It’s similar to starting a painting and deciding on the size of your canvas. Since my creative life is so grounded in visual art, I couldn’t imagine beginning a work in the center of a space and only later deciding I needed more paper to accommodate the idea. Once the container is established, I simply fill it.
The Shadow Planets EP, which was recorded in the same window, then collects the letters you left out of the album. Did those leftover pieces feel like the outtakes of the project, or their own separate thing that just happened to have the same birthday as the LP?
On January 25, 2026, I realized I was working ahead of schedule. May 9 was set as the endpoint for completing Rahu Ketu, and with much of the material already written and recorded, I began to realize I might have too much time on my hands. I wanted to maintain a disciplined daily practice without reaching a point where I was simply tinkering with and endlessly refining the mixes. I wanted to avoid that kind of overworking, so I began thinking about how I could use the remaining time more constructively. That’s when the idea of creating an inverse of the full-length album emerged. The Shadow Planets EP became a companion piece to Rahu Ketu, but also its own separate work entirely.
You also brought in Salvatore Mercatante and Sam Prekop to remix material from that EP. What made you want to involve other musicians on this particular project, especially given how much of the rest of it is built around your solitary daily practice?
I had Salvatore Mercatante and Sam Prekop specifically in mind from the beginning and involved them both right away. I have a deep admiration and respect for both of their musical practices, and I was interested in hearing how their individual sensibilities would transform the material. I thought that bringing two musicians with similarly solitary approaches to making music into the project would produce interesting results. It was also a way of relinquishing some of the control I had over Rahu Ketu and allowing the EP material to exist beyond my own interpretation. Having three original tracks alongside two remixes gave the EP a different kind of structure and introduced a sense of wonder and unpredictability, especially for me as the first listener.
“O-P” came from watching Un flic with your sister and then deciding to try and write some imaginary French noir music the next day. How often does a piece start that specifically, from one image or film or sound or whatever, rather than from an abstract feeling you’re chasing?
Films, visual art, literature, and even mundane everyday experiences can all provide the initial spark for a composition. I think of it like an engine: sometimes all you need is that initial spark to set something in motion. In this particular case, watching Un flic simply gave me a particular mood to work from.
With “F-G,” you start with these keys and trumpet, and then it builds into this march, with drums showing up toward the end. I really love how that piece progresses and sort of keeps you on your toes. Do you usually know how a track is going to end when you start it, or, with this one for example, did the late arrival of the percussion surprise you as much as it might surprise listeners? (or at the least, surprised me!)
With “F-G,” the section toward the end, where the percussion arrives and the bass becomes more driving, was actually what I thought of as the “G” section from the beginning. In that sense, the overall progression was largely predetermined. I tend to approach composition through planning and premeditation, imagining as specifically as possible what I want to create. Once I have that vision in my mind, I try to hold onto it and work toward realizing it. I generally have an imagined destination for a piece of music, rather than following the material wherever it may happen to lead. I think part of the challenge is figuring out how to translate that initial vision into something tangible while maintaining the original idea throughout.
You’ve described this whole project as a kind of reductive sculpture, chiseling away a little every day until something reveals itself. Is there a specific day, or days, from that stretch where you remember the shape really becoming visible to you for the first time?
I remember the moment the album really became visible to me conceptually, when I realized the twelve track titles and understood how they could provide a structure for the entire album. It wasn’t a particular musical breakthrough so much as a moment when I could suddenly see the album as a complete object, even though the individual pieces still needed to be developed. I recall a quote from Quincy Jones comparing making a record to painting a school bus with a toothbrush, and I’ve always related to that idea. Once the overall structure was initially determined, the work became a process of gradually filling in all the details, making small decisions and adjustments every day until the whole thing came into focus.
You moved back to rural Pennsylvania from New York City in 2020 and built a home studio practice there. Has the quiet of that setting changed the actual sound of your music, or mostly just given you the time and space to make it at all?
Relocating to rural Pennsylvania after many years in New York City completely changed my day-to-day life, and that has deepened and widened my relationship with listening and making art. My life before felt very fractured, and creativity often happened in bursts of inspiration whenever they happened to arise. My current environment and daily routines have given me the time and space to approach creative work as a daily practice. Over the past six years, this consistency has allowed me to develop a greater capacity for concentration, to listen and look more deeply, and to work without interruption. I think the biggest change has been the ability to establish a more sustained relationship with music and art, where creativity is no longer dependent on waiting for inspiration but becomes something I’m able to actively cultivate every day. I’m not sure the quiet lifestyle has necessarily changed the sound of the music itself as much as it’s changed the way I listen, the way I work, and the level of attention I’m able to bring to the music.
You’ve called this record and EP the first dispatch in a lifelong musical project. What do you imagine the next chapter looking like, sonically, once you’re in a different astrological period?
With Rahu Ketu, I established a particular set of conditions and discovered what could happen within them. For the next chapter, I’m interested in changing those conditions and seeing how that changes the music. The current astrological period, Rahu Venus, began the day after I completed Rahu Ketu, but instead of eight months, it lasts exactly three years, ending May 9, 2029. That gives me a very different framework to work within. For Rahu Venus, I’m approaching the piano as my primary instrument. As a self-taught musician, I have a lot of technical ground to cover before I can physically realize the music I’m imagining. Playing piano for several hours every day has become the work itself. I’m interested in developing a more performance-based practice, where the physical act of playing and the relationships between instruments become central to the album. Ideally, I’d love to eventually walk into a studio with a trio of piano, bass, and drums and record an entire album in a single afternoon. That’s something completely unfamiliar to me, and I’m drawn to the challenge because I’m not there yet. If the recording date were today, I know I wouldn’t be able to produce the music I have in mind. I want to spend the next three years developing my piano playing and allowing that process to become the foundation for Rahu Venus. Ultimately, I see each project in this series as an opportunity to establish a new set of questions rather than repeat a formula. The astrological periods provide a framework of time, but the music that emerges within them will always remain an open question.
What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome to finally get Rahu Ketu and The Shadow Planets out into the world?
Completing the music was one challenge, and making the decision to let it go into the world was another altogether. There was that initial difficulty of relinquishing ownership, although I’m realizing more and more that perhaps there was never any real ownership to begin with. Yes, Brandon Locher made this music, but I feel that my soul, or spirit, is something more primary and more fundamental than my current individual identity. Perhaps my soul has inhabited many different bodies and lifetimes. Brandon Locher is simply who I am here and now, the particular expression of consciousness through which this music has come into being. I feel there is something deeper at play, something that exists beyond ego, intellect, or mind, beyond the five senses. In that sense, the challenges involved in making and releasing the work have also become part of my spiritual growth.
And, as always, to close… What are some of your favorite sounds in the world?
Silence, because within silence there is dynamism. Pure silence is the field of all possibilities, containing the potential for an infinitude of sounds. As I progress, I’m gravitating more and more toward silence, because I’m realizing that when you end up with absolutely nothing, somehow you’ve captured and experienced totality.
Foxy Digitalis depends on our awesome readers to keep things rolling. Pledge your support today via our Patreon or subscribe to The Jewel Garden. You can also make a one-time donation via Ko-fi.
