undercurrents

TTYL

Render Another Ugly Method

PINK

Mother of My Children

Soft Stud

Taken from the album, Spell #6, released on 2nd November via Tough Love (Europe) and Burger (R.O.W.). The European pressing is available on limited edition green vinyl (500 copies). Pre-order here - http://smarturl.it/PartTimeSpell6 

Follow Part Time
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/parttime623/

Nearing a decade old and with a discography reaching deep into double figures across several different labels (Mexican Summer, Burger, Plastic Response Records) David Loca’s work under the Part Time moniker really shouldn’t require any introduction. Nonetheless, the release of what is officially his sixth album, fittingly titled Spell #6, does signal something of a re-birth and provides a compelling entry point for anyone new to Loca’s prolific output.

Whereas previous albums were notable for a charming lo-fi production, Spell #6 takes Part Time uptown. "I describe this album as 'my studio album', because it was entirely re-recorded at my drummer Walter Byer's studio, unlike most of my past releases being bedroom experimental pop recordings." Loca produced the record himself, impressively appropriating a classic 80s pop sound that recalls some of the more grand productions of that era - think Stephen Street’s expressive production on ‘Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me’, Crowded House and The Church’s widescreen interpolation of Paisley Underground jangle, and there's even traces Gerard McMann’s grandiose ‘Cry Little Sister’. In that sense, the record stands as an outlier in Loca’s catalogue, and in doing so sheds the sometimes limiting trappings of bedroom recording

Though it is Loca’s project, Spell #6 sees him joined by a consistent supporting cast of fellow writers and performers who add a poise and deftness to his vision, most notably Ariel Pink, who makes a guest appearance on lead single, ‘I Can Treat You Better’. 

A lead single for its obvious earworm qualities, it also functions as an ideal snapshot of  the lyrical themes that run through the entire record: romantic gestures and unrequited love, bad decisions on hot nights/hot decisions on bad nights, and unpinning it all, LA. For this is evidently a West Coast record, like a 2018 take on To Live and Die in LA: expansive, grand, and not a little crazy (in love) from the heat.

Part Time - I Can Treat You Better (feat. Ariel Pink)

STEPHEN STEINBRINK
Utopia Teased

US pre-order: http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv180
UK/EU pre-order: https://www.melodic.co.uk/product/stephen-steinbrink-utopia-teased-pre-order/
Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/5Qo591Xv69WpUaRpziRIwA


Stunned with grief in the months following the Ghost Ship fire, Oakland-based Stephen Steinbrink ate LSD daily, bought a synthesizer, and locked himself in his shipping container studio, refusing to sleep for days as he wrote and recorded what would become Utopia Teased, as a means of working through his overwhelming feelings of cynicism and loss.  

Recorded in between stints touring as a member of Dear Nora, and then as a touring member of Girlpool, Utopia Teased is Stephen Steinbrink's followup to his critically acclaimed 2016 album Anagrams.  Unlike the pristine production of Anagrams, on Utopia Teased, Steinbrink embraces the rough edges, as he shifts his focus from the craft of production to the art of processing and capturing his experiences with honesty.   He explains, “I was driving the preamps a little too hard, mixing down to tape, bouncing back to the computer, and repeating the process over and over again. I wanted it to reflect how fried my brain felt at the time, totally pulverized.  The songs just poured out of me, it hardly felt like work to make them up. It was like turing on a spigot. I don’t write often, maybe once or twice a year, but when I do, a lot comes out. To me my craft is less about putting in the hours physically playing music — the real work is getting my soul right so that when the holy wave of pure creative energy moves over your house, it will recognize you as worthy enough. If it does, maybe it’ll give you a song.” 

“Empty Vessel” and “Maximum Sunlight” both sung from perspective of residents of Tonopah, Nevada, were written to accompany a book about the town, by Steinbrink's friend Meagan Day.  The sparse imagery on “Empty Vessel,” ostensibly about a semi-transient lock-picking truck driver, feels at least semi-autobiographical as Steinbrink sings “You're 31, you don't believe in anything…If you don't stop moving you'll never get hurt.”  His evocative lyrics continue to intrigue on “Maximum Sunlight” as he sings “Sleeping through the night in the drained pool / I said I love you to a fool” from the perspective of a 30-year-old alcoholic ATV enthusiast.  At the close of the, too-little-too-late acoustic narrative “Mom”, guest vocalist Melina Duterte of Jay Som joins him in conjuring a memory of listening to extraterrestrial radio, drifting asleep in a suburban Phoenix Wal-Mart parking lot.  The album’s heartbreaking closer “I’m Never Changing Who You Are” continues Steinbrink’s recollection of his adolescence, asking an unnamed family member “Will you try to love more than you did?” while soberly accepting his reality. 

In an interview with North of the Internet, Steinbrink recalled a video he came across on his phone, which was taken the day after the fire, “It sent me spiraling and thinking, it’s almost been a year. Nothing really felt actual those weeks, and I could only only react to the future at a remove because the horror of everything was inescapably tying me to the present. The idea of doing laundry or driving across the bridge to San Francisco to work was too abstract, so I just didn’t do it. I hardly did anything. Two days after the fire I woke up, walked to P.’s porch and sat there for hours alone and cried without a jacket on until the sun started going down. Geese were flying across power lines at dusk and I took a video of them on my phone. I imagined one of the birds was my friend.”  In the same interview, he goes on to share some insight provided by a friend he reached out to when trying to finalize the album: “Finishing the thing puts a limit around something that comes from an infinite well; this is uncomfortable.” True.

Bad Love

Starstruck

Starstruck (Single Version)

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can’t calm down

Cows on Hourglass Pond

Saturdays (Again)

Midnight

Sweet Sweet Midnight

SASAMI

I Was A Window (feat. Dustin Payseur)

Perfect Version

Natural

You lost me again
I can’t remember when
There are things 
I would have liked to shown 
Before you were gone

What have I done
I need someone to help me
What have I done
I need someone to help me

You left me with bane
I wanna marry jane
To think of you
Is the only thing that I can do
You lost me again 
I can’t remember when 

What have I done
I need someone to help me
What have I done
I need someone to help me

Orinoco

Peaches

Close It Quietly

Windows

Nicole Kidman / Anne Hathaway

At the Party

Signal

Too Much Money

The Process / Lonely

The Process

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Cool and Bendable - single

Cool and Bendable

Echo of Dawn/Seven Minutes

Seven Minutes

Written by Nation of Language
Produced by Abe Seiferth
Mastered by Heba Kadry

The Wall & I

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undercurrents

ALIVEDJP KWVA Eugene 88.1