Ender Belongs to Me is a music project that remained anonymous for four years.  Many people knew that the band was a duo based out in Brooklyn that created beautiful indie pop melodies and wrote dark lyrics … that was it.

Yesterday, Enders Belongs to Me released their EP Artifacts, via Tree Machine Records. A couple of months ago I met the man behind the myth and he decided to share his story.

Below, a conversation with Andrew Alexander.
Are you afraid to die?
No. Every time my plane takes off, I crack a smile. I can’t help but laugh at how insignificant my life is. I can’t help but laugh at how significant it feels to me. Perspective can be startling. I try to live outside of my own perspective as much as I can. Still, I am afraid to die.

You started working on the songs included in Artifacts in 2010. Why did you wait till this year to release them?
My close friend and I wrote artifacts in 2009 or 2010, I can’t remember. It was after our first year at college and we had come home to find that my mother was moving and the basement where we spent the greater part of our high school careers drunk would no longer be available to us. So we took acid for a week and wrote these songs locked down there. They aren’t very good.

In the past you mentioned the influence that the idea of death had in your album. How does that relate with your heroin addiction?
We’re both addicts. The music we’ve written on both Memory (Crash Symbols) and Artifacts (Tree Machine Records) can’t help being tied to that life experience. We never meant to live addicted, we never chose to. It’s something that just happened due to our own inability to manage our lives successfully. When you’re sticking a needle in your arm every day, constantly pushing your body closer to the limit of what it’s able to handle, death is a constant neighbor.

What triggered your decision of going to rehab? Does sobriety affect your music?
I was broken. I had no hope for any future. I couldn’t even organize my life enough to send these 6 tracks to the label for publishing. Living life on drugs had proven to be hell, there seemed no choice but to give living life off drugs a chance. Who doesn’t want to be happy?

This album is really experimental and flirts with the idea of audio artifacts mixed with analogue sound and childish voices. How was the process of recording the songs?
All of our music is recorded audio, through the built in Macbook Pro microphone. It’s all mixed and mastered in Garageband. There was no other choice. I had pawned every piece of music equipment. All I had left was my laptop, a cheap kids keyboard, and an acoustic guitar. We never wanted to stop making music, we just couldn’t not sell the tools with which we do so.

What was your intention behind this album? Did you release it for the “people” or for yourself?
I hate people. I love my laptop. Nobody should ever release music for anything other than themselves.

How did moving from NYC to Florida affect your artistic process?
Florida is a cultural wasteland with few exceptions. New York City is overload. The contrast between the two is enlightening and empowering. Our music is internal. The external influences help shape it. However, it will always been a product of personal belief systems which are a product of our upbringings which is a product of our media culture which is a product of our political status which is a product of our spiritual understanding. This music touches on very little while still maintaining the subconscious influence of everything I just said..

What’s the story behind “Getting Colder”? It is an extremely nostalgic song.. with great guitars.
“Getting Colder” is a song about aliens. Or maybe it’s a song for a girl I once loved, I don’t think I remember. We stole a lot from Ocarina of Time.

What do you feel when you listen to the album?
I don’t listen to the album. It brings back intense memories from when I was using heroin. It forces me to dwell on things that I’m trying to learn from and move past. There is a lot of empathy in this music. And for a largely apathetic person, that’s hard to deal with.

What do you want people to feel when listening to the songs?
I don’t care what people feel, as long as they feel something. I don’t think I would be able to accurately predict how this music will make you feel, and I dread the idea of being wrong. So I won’t predict at all. When you put music out into the public sphere, you have to be ready for any reaction: love, hate, misunderstanding. I welcome it all.

What’s next?
International fame seems like the next logical step. If someone could tell me how to make that happen I would be forever grateful.