I have been sitting on my latest EP release for over a year. It was mixed, mastered and graphic work was complete – I just had to pull the trigger. But I couldn’t. Something was not sitting right, or I guess in this case, something was not sounding right.

You see, I suffer from high frequency hearing loss. I get annual hearing tests, and thankfully they are about the same each time, but you see it in the curve, the high end acuity is not there anymore. But there is something else too, something that I have learned is called “recruitment.” This condition, strangely enough, starts to make high frequencies louder in my mind the longer I listen to them. It’s more perception than it is reality, and I experienced it a lot when I was putting together my Christmas release last year titled O Holy Night. And at the conclusion of that release, I told myself, that I couldn’t trust what I was hearing and therefore the new EP release I was planning on releasing after the holidays last year was shelved, as I began to rethink my strategy.

So at this point you may be thinking, no big deal, get someone else to master it, but there is the rub, it costs money to get a good mastering engineer for my style of music, and let’s be honest, Spotify royalties are not paying for that. So instead, I began to work with a new method, which is called “reference” mastering. That is where you find something that is similar and use it for reference. I basically had to retrain my ears that what was sounding awfully rich on the high end was not being heard that way by others. So with this new skill and some trusted musician friends to check my work, I completely redid the mix and master for that shelved release. And on November 21, 2025, you can finally hear the new T.O.D.D. release called Encounter.

So, why call it Encounter? It comes from the lead piece titled “An Unexpected Encounter.” I composed this one a few years ago and I have always received strong, positive feedback from those I previewed it to. The track has a pulsing rhythm that reminds me of Blue Man Group, but it is also mixed with distorted strings, guitars and violin. While composing it, I envisioned a secretive underwater mission that launches from a boat and then they unexpectedly encounter a bioluminescent humpback whale; mesmerized they all take a moment to absorb the experience before moving on with their mission.

The next piece is something that I composed while on spring break with the family one year. They were off on the slopes and I was enjoying uninterrupted personal time. Since it featured steel pedal guitar like an earlier piece I titled “She Let’s Go,” I decided to call this one “She Takes Hold.” It is one of my favorites on this new release.

The third track was almost tossed in its earlier stage of development, because it just didn’t seem to move me at all. It was an experimental track based on a music library that is supposed to allow for easy film/TV scoring. I decided to take as many elements as I could overlap and still have it sound good. I then filled it out with original electric guitar scoring. This scoring library is called “Cinematrix,” so I gave the track a pun-like name of “Sin Matrix.” But it just sounded like something that should be under a film’s dialogue; it just didn’t stand out and that is when I had the idea to find dialogue from one of those old sex ed movies from the 50’s and intersperse samples from those films. I found an ideal candidate that was free of copyright called How Much Affection (1958). Once I had those samples in there, the track could stand on its own and was worthy of release and worthy of a new title, “Sin Matrix (Desire).”

The final track on the EP is something I composed after I learned that Daft Punk was breaking up. Daft Punk is one of my favorite bands and I especially loved their work on Tron Legacy. So I started the piece with a brass fanfare, in their honor ,and then I moved into something that sounds kind of like Daft Punk, but also sounds like me. It is electronic, but also has strings. At one point, I joked with myself that it is by T.O.D.D and features The Other Don Dixon. Hopefully get the humor in that. In the end, I called it, appropriately, “Adieu.”

Now for the artwork. I chose my visualization of “An Unexpected Encounter” as the foundation for the cover artwork. I found a great picture of a whale that was royalty free from NOAA and modified the heck out of it to make a neon blue, bioluminescent whale (see cover artwork above.)

For the inside sleave, I went with the “agents” of the underwater mission, who see the luminous whale receding into dark waters. The original image was royalty free from the Department of Defense. It didn’t feel so strange using that over a year ago when I was working on the artwork, but now . . .oh, well, it is done.

And for the traycard, I chose another angle of our featured whale.

One thing you may notice is that the third track is listed as “Desire” instead of “Sin Matrix (Desire).” I originally was thinking that I would use the shorter title, but a year later, I changed my mind.

So look for the new release to be available in all the usual places on November 21st!