Watercress EP out 10/3 via Jagjaguwar.

https://s-carey.lnk.to/watercress-ep

There is an immediately noticeable shift in mood from the last time we checked in with S. Carey. He was heavy-hearted on 2022’s Break Me Open — crestfallen and reckoning after a big love lost. And so, Watercress sets us off with the ringing of hard-won hope. It is in fact only in the clear, shallow waters that watercress grows. And these are the very places that Sean Carey the human being returns to again and again — to fish, to reflect, and to grow. Seasons have passed and he’s spent time healing in the water, flowing and still. The pieces have been collected and reassembled. Of course, there’s always going to be a wistful quality to S. Carey’s music. But here, it’s the bright, crisp October morning kind of wistful.

Patron saint of painfully slow elevator music.

Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack of Wye Oak have spent most of their lives in Baltimore, Maryland. But after two years of constant touring with Civilian, their highly lauded 2011 album, they landed on opposite sides of the country with an unforeseeable future ahead. Despite this newfound uncertainty, the two bandmates embraced their physical distance, passing ideas back and forth, allowing new work to evolve in their respective solitudes. Shriek is Wye Oak’s fourth full-length and the culmination of their intent to express the emotional and intuitive self by acting out animalistic exclamations through cathartic release. It is their most personal and confident declaration yet.

Newly inspired by playing bass, Jenn took up songwriting in a setting where the guitar did not dictate harmonic boundaries or require a call-and-response relationship with her voice, a hallmark of previous Wye Oak records. With her phrasing freed, now it is often Andy who interacts with Jenn’s vocals, playing syncopated and meditative keyboard parts, and the duo’s collaborative arrangements provide a backdrop in which both the arcs of melodies and the new rhythmic elements flourish.

To engineer, mix, and co-produce, they brought in Nicolas Vernhes of the Rare Book Room in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, whose inventive and forward-thinking approaches to production complemented their new direction. The result is a record of indisputable humanity. Shriek is a complete narrative of disorientation, loss, renewal, and empowerment.

Ólafur Arnalds is a BAFTA-winning multi-instrumentalist and producer from Mosfellsbær, Iceland. Ólafur Arnalds mixes strings and piano with loops and beats crossing over from ambient/electronic to pop.

Max Richter trained in composition and piano at Edinburgh University, at the Royal Academy of Music, and with Luciano Berio in Florence.

On completing his studies, Max co-founded the iconoclastic classical ensemble Piano Circus, where he stayed for ten years, commissioning and performing works by Arvo Pärt, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Julia Wolfe and Steve Reich.

In the late 90s he worked with a number of electronic artists, notably Future Sound of London on their album 'Dead Cities". He subsequently collaborated with FSOL over a period of two years, also contributing to the albums "The Isness" and "The Peppermint Tree and Seeds of Superconsciousness". Max also collaborated with Mercury Prize winner Roni Size, on "In the Mode".

In June 2002, Max released his debut solo album, "memoryhouse", recorded with The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. This was followed in March 2004 by FatCat's release of "The Blue Notebooks", with featured readings by Tilda Swinton.

In 2005 Max produced Vashti Bunyan's outstanding comeback album "Lookaftering".

2006 saw the release of "Songs From Before" based on Haruki Murakami texts read by Robert Wyatt. That same year, Max began performing "from The Art of Mirrors", an evolving score to previously unseen Super 8mm films of Derek Jarman.

Max's more recent work continues to stretch the notions of what Classical music is.  ‘24 Postcards In Full Colour’, released in August 2008, is an experimental work made up of 24 composed ringtones.

Max works widely in film music, installation and the theatre, most recently on INFRA, made with Wayne MacGregor and Julian Opie for The Royal Ballet, London. The Ballet was the subject of a BBC 'making of' documentary.

Max was named 2008 European Composer Of The Year for his score to Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir, for which he was also nominated for the Prix France Musique.

William Fitzsimmons is a singer, songwriter and guitarist.  He is considered the greatest whisper rock artist of all time.  His music has been described as “a bummer” and “dude, work that stuff out on your own time” and yet here we are on his SoundCloud page, LOVING his music.  If you’ve seen him live, well, you’ve seen him live.  So, good for you - why are you bragging about it?  If you haven’t well, maybe you should?  He’s been to a lot of places and seen a lot of things.

This is what bios have become in the age of Twitter...frankly, this one is already too long.

Denison Witmer, a singer-songwriter from Lancaster, PA, has been crafting introspective folk music for over two decades. Balancing music with carpentry, his songs reflect his small-town roots and fatherhood. His new album, Anything At All, produced by and featuring Sufjan Stevens, is set for release in February 2025 on Asthmatic Kitty Records.

I do classical music covers. See my channel.

Galen Meyer is following