I recently learned of the passing of Sonatore; a Nashville based photographer and musician that I admired a great deal. His Instagram is filled with phenomenal polaroids from top to bottom and his Bandcamp was always a compelling and rewarding listen.
I only met him once but engaged with him a few times online. He was delightful and, clearly, immensely talented. I don't know what happened to cause his departure but I am bummed about it. I hope you'll take a moment to cruise his Instagram; it really is quite good.
I've found myself revisiting the musical works of 12 Rods lately. They were a Minneapolis based band that was primarily active from the mid-90s to 2004; releasing three fantastic full-length albums and a couple great EPs. If you consider yourself a fan of Self or Failure or that ilk, it's likely up your alley. They are supposedly gearing up to release new music. To that end, I've been diving back in deep to their whole catalog. I don't have the objective perspective to know if it's a good listen now as a new listener but it checks all the right boxes for me.
As part of that deep dive, I always came across this podcast episode with primary songwriter Ryan Olcott. It's a 2-hour chat and it's quite satisfying. It's also incredibly unfortunate how beat down he can come across because he truly is a talent.
Quick 3 minute piece about a job I never thought about. Stunning shots from inside the Memorial. Why this is manual labor is beyond me but makes for an interesting profile.
The plan with this one is to release each track from the EP on its own, every two weeks - with the full release dropping on Apr 28th. Haven't really released something in this fashion before so it'll be fun to see how that pans out.
Nifty little trash can thingie that takes your food and composts it. Maybe not revolutionary but extremely well presented. Unclear why you must mail the compost back instead of donating locally but maybe that’s Phase 2. Into this.
I'm making a very conscious effort this month to release more music on yk Records. Having 3 releases for 2022 isn't bad but I wanna do more! To that end...
Today, The Medium released two new songs today - "She's Got It" / "Moon Rocks". Songwriter Shane Perry says "These songs are dedicated to my wife Kacy, who I love very much, and my dead plant Tori Jade, who I didn’t love enough."
I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think these are probably the two best songs the group has released. That's a tough thing to say because I like a lot of their previously released catalog but something about these two really strikes me.
For the month of February, I've a lot of new music planned for release via yk Records. The first treat drops today - the debut single from General Trust. Before reading further, just go ahead and hit play...
Who is General Trust? It's the new pseudonym of Jay Leo Phillips. I've been a fan of Jay for a long time now - from his post-punk band Apollo Up! to his solo full-length to his pair ofambient EPs. He's always been a virtuoso guitar player but with this new project, he's taken on a whole new suite of tools... quite intentionally.
The double single - "Blue Ride" / "Coal Futures" - is much more synth and drum machine based than his previous work but he's still able to work in some of his recognizable guitar sounds. If you wanna put a genre on it, you might call it Synthwave, Cold Wave or Synth Punk. Those are all pretty niche but it gives you an idea of what to expect.
Jay's been working on this for a long time - learning the new instruments, recording, refining and putting together a live show that only requires himself to perform everything. I'm quite excited for this new phase of his output.
