With another album in the works for later this year, I didn’t think I’d be kicking off 2025 with this announcement, but I have a new album coming out at the end of January called MISSING PIECES: 2018-2024.
This album is really something special and unique within my discography, and while it’s impossible to expect that everyone who listens to it will also read this post, I really want to try to explain what this album is, because it’s kind of an anomaly and something I’ve wrestled with how to properly release. At an insane 40 tracks in length including the 24 previously released 24 for 2024 singles and 16 never before heard songs… The album is a beast… But let me go back to the beginning.
I kicked off my solo artist career with the trilogy of albums Echoes In The Dark, An Unseen Sky and Head Like Fire between 2013-2016. I also released Bandcamp-exclusive collections of bonus tracks / B-Sides and remixes, as well as some singles along the way that pretty much exhausted all of the music I made during that period. The fourth album, A Different Kind Of Dream was meant to be a start of a new era in my music in 2018 that would see me releasing a constant stream of new releases including albums, EPs, compilations, singles, soundtracks and more… Only it didn’t quite happen.
Sure I released a couple of singles and soundtrack albums in the following years, but really what happened is I got into podcasting. I started my Piecing It Together Podcast along with all the other podcasting projects I do, while continuing to score films and trying to balance everything I was working on. Eventually the different kind of dream that the album was named after turned into… Me just working on and not releasing anything. My plans changed constantly. At one point I considered a 2nd volume of the album A Different Kind Of Dream titled And Other Unexplained Phenomena, but that’s actually the name of my NEXT full length album (we’ll be talking more about that later). Over 2018 and 2019, I recognized that some of my music was getting even darker than I had previously pushed towards while some of it was getting more rich and full and more like the kinds of artists that inspired my music in the first place. I started to envision dual albums with And Other Unexplaind Phenomena getting all the really dark stuff and a new album, MORE CONTENT getting the music that was starting to really represent my growth as an artist.
But then a funny thing happened… 2020. The pandemic. I was stuck in my house (like everyone else) and while i of course recognize how dark of a time it was for so many people, for me, it was a time of insane creativity. I worked on so much new music that year that I had a difficult time deciding what music would go where. As I started forming what would come next, I realized that most of what I was picking was the brand new stuff I started in 2020, and my self-titled album David Rosen was born. A few of the early 2018/2019 tracks made the cut, but mostly they were held back.
Jump forward a couple more years and I finally had a handle on MORE CONTENT, although the album had turned into its own separate release, not in conjunction with the darker And Other Unexplained Phenomena. Not only that, but I of course had started many more songs over those couple years, so once again there were plenty of tracks that didn’t fit anymore on the new release.
Around the time I released MORE CONTENT I was so sure that And Other Unexplained Phenomena would be next, that I even hired an amazing artist to do the artwork for the album… Yet it still didn’t materialize. Instead, I came up with a crazy idea to go back to some of those unfinished songs from 2018-2023 to finish some for what I thought would be the first of a planned series of Archive albums, releasing older, unfinished music and tracks from film scores. But one thing led to another and I ended up with 24 finished songs! Way too many for an album, but they were all so good… As I said when I announced the plans for them, these weren’t throwaways or just bouns tracks, but songs that turned out easily as good as and better than the stuff on my previous albums. So I came up with a ridiculously ambitious idea to release all 24 songs as singles in 2024 as a series called 24 for 2024 and release them on the first and third Friday of every month. Just a nonstop onslaught of new music (not that dissimilar from the original idea for A Different Kind Of Dream). But things get weirder in 2024.
Part of the 24 for 2024 series was AI artwork. I take great care in the artwork for my music, but with 24 individual releases, there was just no way I was going to create and/or commission 24 pieces for the covers. And while some of them are pretty cool… They’re mostly quote-unquote “AI-slop,” and I really didn’t want them to be permanent (seriously… hire artists everyone). So between that and the desire to add a few extra songs to the mix, I started thinking about kicking off 2025 with a compilation album of all 24 songs plus 4 more with a title of 24 for 2024 + 4 More (a truly terrible title in retrospect). This would start the year and I’d finish the year with the long, long delayed release of And Other Unexplained Phenomena. So I started getting those FOUR unfinished songs ready… But then something crazy happened…
In my various folders of unfinished music… I found 16 more totally viable, worthwhile, unfinished songs. As good as anything in 24 for 2024, hell, as good as anything on any of my albums. As I started finishing it all, it became clear… This could just be its own album. But I really wanted to turn the 24 singles into something permanent with its own artwork and I didn’t want to delay my completion of this era of my music any further past 2025. So I started brainstorming and along the way I realized… All of this unfinished but now complete music… Along with the upcoming And Other Unexplained Phenomena and the previously released David Rosen and MORE CONTENT, genuinely make up the total completion of an era. The era kicked off by A Different Kind Of Dream, that kind of got taken over by my split in time between music and podcasting. These tracks, all 40 of them combining the 16 and the 24, went missing for a while in the years between 2018-2024. And keeping with the theme of my Piecing It Together Podcast… They’re kind of missing pieces.
And believe me, it took a lot of self control to not just say “well what if I just release 24 for 2024 as an album now and then Missing Pieces as an album later,” but that would push back And Other Unexplained Phenomena AGAIN. No. That’s unacceptable. Some of this music is SIX YEARS OLD. It’s been long enough. And that… Is why I decided to compile those 40 tracks into MISSING PIECES: 2018-2024. A compilation album that takes a full albums worth of new music and the 24 previously released tracks, and fills in all the missing pieces between David Rosen, MORE CONTENT and And Other Unexplained Phenomena.
Of course that means I now have to finish that final album, but it’s genuinely like 80% done. It’ll get finished this year, for sure. And that, will totally complete this era of my career and musical journey. My plan, and I am sticking to it… Is to consider my whole career up until 2026 FINISHED once that final album comes out. There is no more “unfinished” music. Even if there is, it doesn’t exist. From January 1st, 2026 forward, the only music I will complete and release is music made after 2026.
So if you’ve read this far, thank you for caring about what I do. I care about what I do. But in today’s world of music, caring about music is just not really a thing people do anymore. But I really put a lot of thought into how all of this stuff fits together, and that’s why I had to release this album this way.
So with all of this said… MISSING PIECES: 2018-2024 will be out on Friday, January 31st, 2025. I’m not making a physical copy because at 40 tracks, that’s kind of impossible. But I wouldn’t be surprised if I find a way to do it at some point in the future. For now though my focus will be on releasing And Other Unexplained Phenomena on CD with the amazing artwork I had created. And of course finishing it first.
There are two music videos for tracks from the original 24 for 2024 songs, “Burn” and “Begin Again,” but maybe I’ll manage to get videos made for some of the new tracks. I actually have music videos in the works for 4 songs from the next album, but not this one… It’s just the way it worked out. But that’s fine. This album like I said is kind of unique in that way. I do consider it a full length, real entry in my discography, but as you’ve read, it’s come together in a kind of unique way and promoting it isn’t really the point. It fills in the gaps, and that’s okay. That’s its job in the discography. It’s like the glue of my career thus far.
So that’s what MISSING PIECES: 2018-2024 is. I’m so proud of all this music and can’t wait for you to hear it all. Some of the tracks truly suprise me in such a huge way. And the fact that I had 40 songs worth finishing sitting on my hard drive that I could have just as easily wiped away blows my mind. I hope you enjoy them all as much as I do. And lets look forward to a great 2025 of new music… And me getting that new album done soon.
David Rosen is an award-winning music composer. He composes original music for films, commercials, jingles, video-games and all other kinds of media projects. He has a vast music library of original tracks available for licensing and is also available for custom compositions. Contact him on the ABOUT page for pricing and availability for your next project.