I decided to take a short break from the sad piano vortex & moved north into the Flemish countryside & recorded a drone record. 
Although initially inspired by a recurring dream wherein “if someone listened to the music I created, then they would die.” 
I would like to acknowledge the barbiturate from the album title as both muse and sacred escape: 
“When you are sitting face forward on the daily emotional meat grinder of life, I always wished I could have some, 
so I could just fall asleep automatically and the feeling would not be there anymore.”

Tissue Of Lies

Pair A Dice

From the self-titled album Lamplight, available March 1, 2024 on Western Vinyl
buy / listen lnk.to/lamplight

Lamplight - "House Rules"

World on a String

Taken from the ninth album "Walking After Dark" from this long-running New Haven group is a sprawling travelogue through the band’s strengths. Across two LPs the quartet weaves heady, improvised jams with melodious, hazy lyricism, balancing fried, stony brilliance with outré excursions of experimental serenity. Released May 17th, 2024 via Trouble In Mind Records (www.troubleinmindrecords.com)

RIYL: Neil Young "On The Beach" / Amon Düül "Psychedelic Underground" / Bardo Pond "Bufo Alvarius" / Movietone "s/t"

The Sun Shines On The Moon

The Sun Shines On The Moon (edit) (Trouble In Mind Records)

From the album Miracle Focus available June 7, 2024
stream/buy https://lnk.to/miraclefocus

LYRICS:
SOMETHING, SOMETHING MORE THAN ME
I NEED SOMETHING, MORE THAN ME
SOMETHING BEYOND WHAT, I CAN SEE
YOU HOLD THE PRESSURE IVE GOT THE RELEASE

THEN THE YEARS START RUNNING
OH AND THE PRESSURE BUILDS
AND YOU NEED RELEASE

ALITTLE MORE YOU
ALITTLE LESS ME
WITHOUT PRESSURE BABY
YOU’LL NEVER GET RELEASED

I NEED SOMETHING MORE THAN ME
SOMETHING BEYOND WHAT I CAN SEE
YOU HOLD THE PRESSURE IVE GOT THE RELEASE

I SPENT SO MANY YEARS RUNNING
OH AND THE PRESSURE KEEPS BUILDING 
I JUST NEED RELEASE

ALITTLE MORE YOU
ALITTLE LESS ME
WITHOUT PRESSURE, WITHOUT PRESSURE 
YOU WILL NEVER FIND RELEASE

Miracle Focus

Strand of Oaks - "More You"

Rewilding

From the album Patron Saint of Tireless Losers available June 28, 2024 on Western Vinyl
Pre-order / stream https://lnk.to/patronsaint

Patron Saint of Tireless Losers

Gabriel Birnbaum - "Perfect Again"

Reaching Out

This may be the first time that Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea are officially appearing on Headphone Commute, but I assure you, I have been listening all along, starting from their self-titled debut release on Past Inside The Present to the more established Liberamente out on Jonas Munk's (aka Manual) Azure Vista imprint in 2019. Of course, besides the solo works by these monumental ambient composers, Zach Frizzell (aka zakè) and Damien Duque (aka City of Dawn) have previously collaborated together, and their 2023 album on PITP, Ash, was picked as one of my favourites of the year. Here, they are joined by Marc Ertel to round up the project, which appears to spearhead the "dronegaze" genre, this time forward driven by orchestral textures, guitar swells, and bass ("Cadere" is my particular favourite piece). Today, I am sharing the last track from their upcoming new album, Reveries, rounding off three-quarters of an hour spent in tranquil waves, sunny rays, and drifting bliss. It's an overall positive and soothing experience, approaching cathartic and restorative treatment as if pointing something towards your entire being, which releases vital healing energy and something you can drown in, becoming one with everything at once. Maybe "curegaze" or "ambientonic" is a better term for that...

Reveries

Aufero

TRACK PREMIERE : Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea - Aufero

From the self-titled debut by Lean Year.  Available October 20, 2017 on Western Vinyl

Pre-Order the album:
Bandcamp https://leanyear.bandcamp.com/album/lean-year
iTunes http://hyperurl.co/q612za
WV http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv152

Lean Year is the debut, self-titled record by Richmond, Virginia based singer Emilie Rex and filmmaker/musician Rick Alverson. What for Rex was a departure from the structured life of academia toward the uncertain contours of a creative field, for Alverson was a return to form. Having released 5 albums with his previous band Spokane, Alverson took a 10-year hiatus from music to write and direct feature films. These departures and approaches bring a transience and listlessness to the album, like a walk interrupted by both curiosity and caution. 

Equally informed by the minimalist folk music of Elizabeth Cotton, Karen Dalton, and Fred Neil; the tenuous, ambient, and orchestral works of Harold Budd, Brian Eno, and John Cale; the quietly pointed but tender songs of Nina Simone and Bessie Smith; and the baroque pop subversions of Love and The Left Banke—the inspirations for Lean Year are as varied as Rex and Alverson’s biographies. Their childhoods—framed respectively by New-Age ideology and antiquated Catholic Catechism; anarchist Montessori and cold, cloistered ice arenas; the chaotic, upheaval of divorce and the strange, obligatory qualities of life-long marriage—provide footing on uneven ground for the record’s dream-like, oblique observations. In the wake of these dynamic histories, the two leaned on music as a kind of secular spirituality. 

Rex and Alverson co-wrote the album over the course of a year at their home in Richmond, VA and recorded it in three sessions at the home studio of Chicago musician/engineer Erik Hall (In Tall Buildings, NOMO), who also performs on the record. Alverson and Hall co-produced the album’s ten tracks, drawing on both Hall's and Elliot Bergman’s (NOMO) arsenal of instruments. For Hall and Rex, this project was a reunion of sorts, the two having met as undergraduates in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan over a decade before. Hall’s extensive vocabulary—ranging from jazz and pop to rock and afrobeat—informs his contributions to the record.

Alverson’s films [Entertainment (2015) and the cult-drama The Comedy (2012)] have premiered at Sundance, Locarno, Rotterdam and the Film Society of Lincoln Center among others venues and festivals worldwide. Rex left academia and her position as Indiana University's Assistant Director of Sustainability in 2014 to focus on music and pursue resilience writing and analysis as a consultant. This is her first record.

Lean Year

Lean Year - "Watch Me"

An independent record label based in Austin, TX.

Lean Year - "Watch Me"

Western Vinyl

Recent comments

Scattered Lodges

Related tracks