Erik Schilke left his hometown of Ledyard to go to college in Montreal and ended up spending a decade there working and developing his music. But it was coming back here and spending time in nature — and with his ailing father, Peter — that inspired his debut album.

Schilke’s “Synthesis” features electronic music using sounds from his time outdoors at his parents’ Ledyard home. The songs almost feel like a soundtrack — making sense together but also being wonderfully varied, from the spare beauty of “Memory Breath,” which builds and blossoms as if it were the sonic equivalent of the sun rising, to the propulsive, almost train-like rhythms that punctuate “Jam to Everything.”

“Synthesis” was released earlier this month on Germany-based Hymen Records, an established label of ambient and dark techno.

Schilke says his work bridges “the gap between electronic music and the natural organic world, two almost polar opposite things.”

People might think of electronic music as digitally produced and somewhat overprocessed, he acknowledges — clean, dry, computer-made.

But when he returned after 10 years from the city to his parents’ home, which is deep in the woods of Ledyard, Schilke says, “I started hearing all these sounds that I hadn’t heard in a decade. So I pulled out my recorder and started recording birds chirping, coyotes in the woods howling at night. Every now and then, I’d help my parents outside, like work in the yard and maybe make a fire, so I’d record the sound of crackling fire in the fire pit.”

The crackling and snapping in the song “Memory Breath,” for instance, came from a recording of embers and fire. He even recorded his dog walking around and sniffing.

“I was literally recording everything. It was like a diary of recordings,” he says.

Schilke then synthesized the recordings to mirror electronic beats, and he also employed some computer-based software instruments.

A boomerang journey

Something else that informed his music: Schilke’s time spent over the years bouncing between Canada and southeastern Connecticut. He grew up in Ledyard and then went to college at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music. After graduating, he stayed on in Montreal. He eventually decided to get his permanent resident visa, which is the first move toward Canadian citizenship.

That meant leaving Canada temporarily and waiting to get his permanent visa. He moved back into his childhood home in Ledyard in the early fall of 2016 and expected to be there a short time before returning to Montreal.

But the process slowed, in part because when President Trump was elected, Canada was inundated with immigration requests, Schilke says.

“What I was told was supposed to be just a few months turned into a few more months and then eventually a year and then another year,” he says.

Schilke recalls that he ended up feeling stuck in Connecticut. He had left a life, a group of friends and even a music studio he had built in Montreal.

Schilke says that’s part “of what the album is about, being torn between Montreal and Connecticut but also the entire journey.”

The album has “layers of concepts and narratives” as well, including those having to do with his father and his father’s death.

His father, Peter, had multiple sclerosis and died in 2018. Schilke says his father passed away “tragically and suddenly on a family vacation. It was unexpected,” but he declined to specify what happened.

While he was conflicted in certain aspects of being back in Ledyard starting in 2016, he says, “I realized I was really happy to be home because my dad was sick.”

He says he was lucky to be able to live with his parents; he got to know them as friends. And, he adds, his parents “allowed me to sort of go on this sabbatical. I was still working, but I was able to create this creative space and really be able to dive into discovering my craft.”

Schilke stops at one point while discussing his father and says, “When I start talking about my dad, I get choked up.

He goes on: “When people have somebody close to them that passes away, it really forces you to collect your values, morals … It can make you feel really weak at times but also really strong. It puts things into perspective, and that gave me the strength to do something I felt like I had never done before.”

The description he wrote for “Synthesis” on the record label website includes (in stylized lower case), “his debut album synthesis is greatly inspired by the interconnected patterns and pathways of nature, and how they help create meaning out of the chaotic process of grief. it explores the search for reason we are sent on when confronted with losing a loved one …”

Reconsidering things

Schilke says his father, who retired from the Navy and then worked as an engineer, was laid back but a hard worker, and very funny. “He was always able to make anybody laugh in any situation,” he says.

His father did get to hear some of the “Synthesis” songs and particularly loved the ones that had to do with the fires they built and the yard work they did together.

Schilke continued writing songs that ended up on “Synthesis” after his father died.

“I was simultaneously writing about my healing process while grieving,” he says.

Schilke eventually got his permanent residency to enable him to move back to Montreal in 2018. He did relocate there after his father’s death but, after three months, returned to Connecticut.

A variety of factors played into that decision, from not being able to find a job there, to his changing feelings about Montreal and the constant worry about immigration, to the fact that he felt he was needed in Connecticut and should be close to his family. (Erik’s mother, Laura, still lives in Ledyard.) Schilke had thought about living between Connecticut and Canada, but the pandemic has prevented that. He's currently living in Mystic.

Surrounded by music

Schilke grew up a musical family. His parents had always been very artistic, and they wanted their kids to do music as one of the activities during their free time. Schilke’s grandmother loves music and always wished she could play and perform; she paid for all her grandchildren to take piano lessons.

Erik, who has two older brothers and a younger sister, ended up choosing the stand-up bass as his primary instrument. That grew in part from the simple fact that his brother played guitar and needed a bass player. But Erik ended up loving the instrument.

“I think it’s a gorgeous instrument. I was attracted to the upright bass because of all the sounds, the gritty sounds that you could make and how many different ways you could manipulate the strings with the bow and mimic different instruments. You could make it sound like a violin, you could make it sound like a cello, you could make it sound like, I don’t know, like an animal roaring in the really deep side of the bass,” he says.

Schilke was involved in all sorts of music groups — from concert band to jazz band to chamber choir — at Ledyard High School, before graduating in 2008.

He says that making music is very therapeutic.

“For me, it allows me to escape from reality and kind of build my own reality or universe of sounds, my own world. … It can be very cathartic. The days where I have a really good music session, I always just feel my best,” he says.

In addition to making his own music, Schilke enjoys collaborating with other artists and doing sound design and producing music.

Discussing how he ended up releasing “Synthesis” on Hymen Records, Schilke says, “I had listened to some artists on their label, and I loved their music, so when I decided it was time to release something, I reached out to them. And fortunately, they liked (my) music, too.”

Schilke says he feels proud of “Synthesis” and that he took that leap of faith and did the album.

“Being me, having my personality, being really OCD and very anxious and having a lot of self-doubt … this was a huge accomplishment,” he says, noting that he could have released multiple albums since high school but didn’t think that material was good enough.

This album, he says, “is a huge first step.”