Orindal

GREG JAMIE- Across a Violet Pasture ORD-86

Release date: October 10, 2025

An established devotee of dark weirdness, Greg Jamie brings forth his second solo album on Orindal: Across a Violet Pasture. Over ten songs, Jamie journeys to the strange, enchanted center of his personal vision. This is a space between sleeping and waking, where Jamie’s woodsy, weary voice guides us forward.

It’s no surprise that the latest from the Maine-based musician and visual artist aims to haunt, but this experimental folk pop does it in a way that’s more playful than funereal. It lays a shimmering floor over the abyss.

Across a Violet Pasture evokes, on different tracks — a sea shanty, a cowboy song, and lounge music for a David Lynch film. A beaten-up vintage drum machine provides the pulse for one song, while another conjures the cavernous panic of Suicide. But the album doesn’t adhere too strictly to any gesture or influence. This is Jamie’s unique blend.

Many of the songs on Across a Violet Pasture are about going away — in search of freedom, alternatives, and a sense of meaning. There are mentions of the open road, a passage through the woods, distant shores, and the countryside. Yet Jamie’s descriptions of everyday life are mostly hints of a real world, quickly interrupted by bursts of the unexpected. Stories about relationships and inner turmoil are suggested. A broken or restless heart cries out. But the narratives are never fully told. In “Beautiful Place,” the singer speaks as if in a dream: “I took the witches by the hand / To tell me where I am / And take me back inside the fold.”

Death also haunts the singer, and images of violence — a noose, body parts by a tree — suggest nightmarish turns. But the songs are full of nostalgic sweetness and many of the melodies are sunny. The most disorienting lines often become the catchiest refrains. In “I’d Get Away,” Jamie repeats: “It’s hard to realize that the moment in my head / Is better often dead / That’s all.” And in “When I Die,” the title phrase becomes a kind of chant, as Jamie sings: “When I die… That’s when I die.”

For a record with folk roots, Across a Violet Pasture is intricately layered. Distinct instrumental parts blend into indeterminate noises; sci-fi static, swoons, scrapes, and hisses. Echoed sounds suggest distances: caves, wells, and long, twisting paths. We are lost inside a fugue-like soundscape.

Greg Jamie describes the result as something that “might sound like it's on a dirty cassette tape, buried and unearthed, but has muffled brightness. Something that might sound better early in the morning if you haven’t slept.” Jamie’s voice is spectral in this setting — always doubled, reverberating, or joined by other singers’ harmonies. It feels like he’s standing at the mast of a ship, guiding a band of skeletons through a fog.

It makes sense that this kind of music came out of a therapeutic process between Jamie and his longtime collaborator Colby Nathan, another musician from Maine’s experimental scene. Over several years, Jamie went to Nathan’s home in South Portland, Maine to work through what the songs meant to him and how they might unfold as recordings. This process, with Nathan’s added parts (bass, synth, guitar, vocals) and production decisions, shaped the sonic atmospheres of the record. About Colby Nathan, Jamie writes: “I see them as sort of an interpreter of my ideas, placing them in a world or vocabulary that I don’t always easily access.”

Other contributors on the record include Robert Pycior (of O’Death) on violin, Tom Kovacevic on Ney flute (processed by Colby Nathan via analog tape loops), and, on one song, backing vocals from Colorado-based folk singer Josephine Foster (who serendipitously happened to be traveling through Maine during the album sessions). That song, “Beautiful Place,” is a plea to a broken world with the repeated refrain “Can there be a beautiful place where we can go in this world?” It's a deceptively simple question, but something universal, and sounds more like empty longing as the song goes on, the question never answered.

The strength of Across a Violet Pasture is its intuitive rawness. It’s art made at home; the product of a deep inner life and a personal mythology. And like Greg Jamie’s uncanny watercolor paintings, this record juxtaposes muted, dark backgrounds with shocks of vibrant color. The “violet pasture” of the title evokes a mix of passionate red and cool, sorrowful blue. The resulting purple is mystical and a little extravagant. It’s a color hardly found in nature. And when it is, like the violet flower, it survives only in dappled forest shade. Admired by hermits, fauns, and idealistic weirdos, there’s a secretive, melancholy, and ephemeral beauty to this work. — Claire Cronin

Tracks

  1. I'd Get Away (3:44)
  2. Beautiful Place (4:56)
  3. Sunny (3:19)
  4. Time Has a Way (2:36)
  5. Wanna Live (3:27)
  6. When I Die (3:59)
  7. What Is the Answer (2:45)
  8. Heartbeat (4:27)
  9. I Wanted More (5:42)
  10. Distant Shore (2:22)

    11. Credits

      Produced, recorded and mixed by Colby Nathan
      Mastered by Caleb Mulkerin

      Greg Jamie : vocals, guitar, synth
      Colby Nathan: bass, synth, guitar, vocals

      With:
      Bob Pycior : violin on tracks 2, 3, 4, 9
      Elisabeth Fuchsia : viola on tracks 1, 7
      Mark Fede : drums on tracks 2, 5, 8, 9
      Josephine Foster: backing vocals on track 2
      Keith J Nelson: clarinet and bass clarinet on tracks 1, 6, 7, 8
      Tom Kovacevic: ney flute on tracks 6, 7
      Michael Cormier O’Leary : drums on track 7
      David Rogers-Berry: additional percussion on track 2

      In loving memory of Martha Hansen and Murdoch

      Album artwork by Greg Jamie
      Design and layout by Gordon Ashworth

      Pressing Information

      Vinyl edition:
      330 high quality, 160g, classic black vinyl LPs w/ silver labels in extra heavyweight, full color, gloss jackets w/ 3 color, Risograph-printed inserts. Artwork by Greg Jamie, design by Gordon Ashworth. 10 tracks, 37 minutes.

      Vinyl pressed by Smashed Plastic in Chicago, IL.
      Jackets printed by Stoughton Printing in City of Industry, CA.
      Inserts printed by Issue Press in Grand Rapids, MI.

      Cassette edition:
      100 professionally dubbed FerroMaster tapes in silver shells imprinted with black ink. Tapes are packaged in full color photo J-cards & clear Norelco boxes. Artwork by Greg Jamie, design by Gordon Ashworth. 10 tracks, 37 minutes.

      Tapes manufactured by National Audio in Nashville, TN.

      Postcard edition:
      A set of 6 full color postcards featuring 6 different paintings by Greg Jamie including the one on the cover of the album. Cards are 5.5 x 4.25 inches & come in a resealable eco bag. Postcard sets limited to 100 copies.

      Postcards printed by Jakprints in Cleveland, OH.

      All vinyl & cassette orders include a digital download of the entire album available on the October 10 release date.

      Across a Violet Pasture vinyl distributed by The Business & Revolver / Midheaven.