BUTCHIE, the project of artist and educator Matthew Waldman, has released ‘ALABASTER’, an electronic, disco and psychedelic track shaped by a formative memory from New York’s club scene. It reflects on a young man Waldman repeatedly saw but could not get close to, and later reinterprets that apparent distance through the man’s experience of being closeted; the song considers how desire, silence and hidden identity affect perception.

Waldman began attending New York clubs at 15 and was struck by the man’s pale skin, dark hair and statue-like appearance, which inspired the title. Years later, he learned the man had become a prominent designer and had been protecting a concealed part of himself at the time. The track also draws on Waldman’s late-night café sketches and poetry, using nightclub disco, hazy psychedelia and electronic textures to recreate memories altered by time.