Mr. Chill, the debut solo EP by Dan Wriggins, is out March 12 on Orindal Records. To celebrate its release, Dan will be performing the record live on YouTube on Saturday, March 13 at 8PM Eastern. Karima Walker & Lina Tullgren will support the show with streaming sets & Dan's Friendship bandmate, Jon Samuels, will host the event. Subscribe to Dan's channel & watch the show for free at youtube.com/watch?v=u2t-1kT51mo.
Just in time for Bandcamp Friday, we're releasing cassette editions of both Gia Margaret albums: 2018's There's Always Glimmer & 2020's Mia Gargaret. Both cassettes are professionally dubbed onto high bias chrome tape in imprinted shells with full color, two-sided j-cards. The cassette edition of Mia Gargaret comes in an aqua blue shell. The cassette edition of There's Always Glimmer comes in a silver glitter shell & includes two bonus tracks: "Babies" & "Smoke (Acoustic)". Each edition is limited to 250 copies.
You can order your copies now through the link in bio, or add them to your Bandcamp cart to buy tomorrow!
Waking the Dreaming Body, the gorgeous new album of melancholic Americana & sun-drenched synth drones by Karima Walker is out today onKeeled Scales / Orindal Records!!!
"Each song oscillates between rich, ambient textures and melancholy poetry, ebbing and flowing between moments of stark lucidity and blissful ethereal haze.... From the lonely campfire folk of ‘Softer’ to the sound of howling wind that underpins ‘Windows 1’, each song evokes a landscape in some way, inviting you to lose yourself in the sheer open vastness. Trust me – that takes some pretty powerful magic." — Loud and Quiet Magazine
"Dan Wriggins’
voice—gravelly and plaintive and guttural—is one of those voices that
gets in your head and stays there, wringing emotion from unseen
reserves." —
Matt Wallock, American Songwriter
Today, American Songwriter premiered "Lucinda on June Bug," the second advance single from Dan Wriggins (of Friendship)'s debut EP of stripped-down alt-country & folk stunners, Mr. Chill. The premiere is accompanied by an interview with Dan where he discusses the writing & recording of "Lucinda on June Bug."
“I hope people think the song is funny, and take the title [as] I meant
it: ‘Lucinda on June Bug’ means ‘Lucinda Williams’ body of work on the
topic of june bug(s),’ the way an egghead might say ‘Tolstoy on
morality’ or something. I also hope people like the George H. W. Bush
joke at the end.”
Read my salty lips: Mr. Chill is out on cassette & digital formats March 12, 2021. Pre-order your copy HERE.
You'll find the "Lucinda on June Bug" premiere & Matt Wallock's interview with Dan HERE.
Various Small Flames premiered the single yesterday along with this intimate acoustic performance video of the song:
“This was the last song I
wrote for the record,” Walker explains. “It became the song that was able
to bridge, with a certain kind of peace, a space that I had been in for a
long time. It moved from a stuck-and-in-between place to the place I
was physically in, which was beautiful and singular. I was outside and
camping and I think you know the feeling I’m talking about. All the
uncertainty and fear spilled out into something very present and
joyful.”
Pre-order Waking the Dreaming Body on mail-order-exclusive color vinyl, black vinyl, compact disc, cassette or download HERE.
Durham, NC synth pop phenom Moon Racer filmed a delightful live session for the Hopscotch Music Festival & NPR Music. You'll find cozy living room performances of Is It Really a Secret? highlights "New Crush," "Friendly Ghost" & "Last Kiss" on the NPR site. You can also watch Moon Racer's full 6-song set below!
On March 12, Orindal Records will release Mr. Chill, an EP of five "busted and beautiful" folk songs by Dan Wriggins (also of Friendship). This morning, GoldFlakePaint premiered the title track, calling it "another solemn gem from one of the finest songwriters around."
Dan explains:
"I wrote the song 'Mr. Chill' while working for an arborist/tree care
company in the Philly suburbs. The hours were long and strenuous, and
like most of my friends, I was balancing full time work with writing
music and playing shows. That’s where the clock-punching lyrics come
from. This was a couple years ago, and I am only realizing now that “Mr.
Chill” might be a Christmas song. It also reminds me of the Disney ride
“It’s a Small World.” It’s the only song I’ve written so far that does
not rhyme.”
The EP Mr. Chill is Wriggins’ debut release under his own name.
Michael Cormier’s minimal production is an open frame; quiet drums in a
big room, classical guitar, and melodic organ lift Wriggins’ prose-poem
lyrics. His solemn, wounded delivery makes lines like “you trust your
gut/and your gut lies” and “read my salty lips/no new love” into deadly
serious jokes. Title notwithstanding, Mr. Chill isn’t great background
music - it’s rich and powerful, demanding attention as a profoundly
moving and original work.
Find "Mr. Chill" on your favorite streaming service HERE.
Mr. Chill will be released on cassette & digital formats on March 12, 2021. Pre-order your copy HERE.
Dan Wriggins, frontperson of Philadelphia alt-country band Friendship, has released his first two solo singles, "Dent" & "The Diner." Recorded in October 2020 at Big Nice Studio in Lincoln, RI, both songs feature Dan Wriggins on classical guitar & vocals with accompaniment from Michael Cormier (drums, organ), Lina Tullgren (violin) & Pete Gill (guitar). Both songs carry the same commiserative humor & emotional heft that made Friendship’s 2019 album Dreamin’ a cult favorite.
This morning, Brooklyn Vegan premiered "Dent" & "The Diner" alongside a music video for “The Diner,” directed by Dan & his brother, Adam
Wriggins, & filmed in the brothers’ hometown of Yarmouth, Maine. Brooklyn Vegan's Andrew Sacher writes:
"Friendship's music is on the quiet, plainspoken side to begin with, but 'Dent' and 'The Diner' do feel even more stripped-back and minimal, and
the lyrics often sound like they're ripped straight out of a diary.
They're both folky songs that feel ragged and lived-in (similar vibe to
Neil Young, Will Oldham, etc), and they're both songs that can stop you
in your tracks and leave you hanging on every word."
Waking the Dreaming Body, the new album by Tucson, AZ sound & video artist Karima Walker, is out February 26, 2021 on Keeled Scales / Orindal Records. This morning, Brooklyn Vegan premiered Karima's music video for "Horizon, Harbor Resonance," an epic 13 minute ambient track & the second single from Waking the Dreaming Body. Karima explains:
"I have performed parts of "Horizon, Harbor Resonance"
live for a couple years now, the piece initially developed after my last
record. There’s a large cathartic rain that falls a couple times and
stands as a kind of threshold for me during live shows. I have been
obsessed with waves and tsunamis for the past few years (Harbor
Resonance is an effect that happens during a tsunami, where the force of
the wave is magnified when it’s contained) and this song was a way of
working through that obsession.
The video traces the Rio Grande
river valley across the New Mexico Colorado border. Touring in the
western US, on these long drives, I would enter a kind of altered state,
watching the landscape change over many hours. This particular region
stayed with me, and ended up inspiring large parts of the record and
"Horizon, Harbor Resonance" especially. I remember passing San Antonio
mountain for the first time. It’s the mountain you see toward the end of
the video. It’s unattached to any range (a friend recently told me that
it is the largest free standing mountain in the continental US), and
rises up out of the desert as you leave New Mexico. It’s massive and
takes a while to pass, marking the beginning of the San Juan Mountains.
I
wanted to share this special way of seeing with people, to stretch and
compress time like in a dream, the way mountains will sometimes move
like water as you move through a landscape over the course of a day, and
how our experience changes when the ‘eye’ is steady or hand held. These
ways of seeing change our perception and experience, and so too our
participation in a place and our access and connection to it."
Pre-order Waking the Dreaming Body by Karima Walker on vinyl, CD, cassette & digital formats HERE.
"Reconstellated" is the lead-off track from Karima Walker's forthcoming album, Waking the Dreaming Body, out February 26, 2021 on Keeled Scales / Orindal Records.
Tucson, Arizona interdisciplinary artist Karima Walker walks a line
between two worlds. Aside from her long resume of collaborative work
with artists in the diverse fields of dance, sculpture, film,
photography and creative non-fiction, Walker has long nurtured a duality
within her work as a musician, developing her own sonic language as a
sound designer in tandem with her craft as a singer/songwriter. The
polarity within Walker’s music has never been so articulately explored,
or graced with as much intention, as on her new album,
Waking the Dreaming Body.
GoldFlakePaint premiered Karima Walker's self-directed video for "Reconstellated." Anyone who has been lucky enough to see Walker perform live in
recent years will recognize the collage-style psychedelia of her
video work, which showcases the gorgeous desert landscapes surrounding
Walker's Tucson home. In GoldFlakePaint's premiere of "Reconstellated," GFP's Tom Johnson writes:
Settled on a bed of gentle synths, “Reconstellated” is patient
and spellbinding, the song touches upon many of the themes that informed
the album overall: sleep, and nature, and the strange ways we fit
ourselves inside these things. “
Don’t we move like water too? Don’t we pick up in the night? What does the mountain think of you?” she questions in the song. “Write it down, tell your friends I know where I am, but I can’t tell if I’m a part of it.”
Pre-order Waking the Dreaming Body on color vinyl, black vinyl, compact disc & digital formats HERE.
Shelter of a Song vinyl is distributed by The Business. Ask your local independent record store to order you a copy or purchase vinyl, CDs & downloads through mail order HERE.
