Arswain is the electronic alias for LA-based electronic songwriter, producer, and composer, Freddy Avis. 

 

Avis grew up in the Bay Area and attended Stanford University on a baseball scholarship. When a shoulder injury abruptly ended his baseball career, Avis studied at Stanford’s the Center for Computer For Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), a global hub for experimental music composition. At CCRMA Avis began to craft what became Arswain’s hybrid sound, containing all the ambition of experimental electronic production, as well as a songwriting pathos rooted in the likes of Radiohead’s Kid A. 

 

In 2016 Avis moved to Los Angeles, where he worked at Hans Zimmer's film scoring studio in Santa Monica. After two years of ghostwriting TV scores, Avis opened up his own shop in LA's Highland Park neighborhood and worked on dozens of film and TV scores alongside names like Steve Jablonsky, James Newton Howard, and James S Levine. The demands of film scoring required him to constantly fit his music to the creative visions of others, making Arswain a vital outlet for Avis to explore and re-assert his own sound as a solo artist.

 

Arswain released his debut full-length in 2020 titled Partitioning, a concept album about climate grief. Partitioning spanned genres of electronica, psych rock, drum n bass, and jazz - all connected by Avis’s moody and ascendent vocals. The album’s title track landed a remix by Anjunadeep’s Luigi Sambuy, featured on Anjunadeep 12 Sampler, Pt. 2 and surpassing 150,000 streams on Spotify.

 

In 2022 Arswain released a compilation titled 2021, comprised of songs written during the height of COVID pandemic. His single “The Garden” placed #1 on Bob Moses’ “Like It Or Not” playlist, blending breathy pitched vocals with a thick industrial beat. 

 

Lick From The Sink, Arswain’s sophomore genre-bending album, arrived in the Spring of 2023. The record is a genre-bending satire of living as an artist in Los Angeles, journeying between the playful and the morbidly pensive. The lead single “Bust” features lyrics from the short story of the same name written by Hannah Smith, as well as an accompanying music video by London-based Indexthumb, aka Willow Hamilton.

 

Arswain’s third full-length record, I Thought It Was Perfect, arrives in the spring of 2026.