"There’s a sense of the other-worldly to his music" - CLASH
“channels easy-listening exotica a la Stereolab” - SHINDIG
It was somewhere in remote Alaska that Michael Gold—who records and performs pop–infused psych-rock as Mirror Tree—began to realize that he was officially on the road less traveled. “I was flying around between all these native villages and all these little, muddy gravel air strips in a single-engine Cessna, in and out of snowstorms, and landing on ice-covered runways,” says Gold, who worked for several years as a pilot in the Last Frontier, and currently is based out of Los Angeles, and flies a 737 for a major airline. “Being a musician to me always felt like the path of least resistance a little bit, you know? And when I touched down in a place like Bethel, Alaska, I felt very firmly off of the path of least resistance.”
Until Gold decided to fly away from the world he knew, music was always right there in front of him. Gold’s mother, Sharon Robinson, is a Grammy-winning singer/songwriter who collaborated extensively with the late Leonard Cohen, co-writing some of his classics like “Everybody Knows.” Robinson was close friends with Cohen, and Cohen was Gold’s godfather: “He was definitely a big part of my world growing up, for sure,” Gold explains.
Raised in L.A., Gold was formally trained in classical and jazz piano, and the wonders and possibilities of music seeped into him. He continued pursuing music in college, studying jazz piano at nearby CalArts, where he lived in a barn in the remote town of Val Verde, which was at one point known as the “Black Palm Springs.” Around this time, he joined the indie-disco band Poolside as a keyboardist/vocalist, bouncing around the world on tour with them, as well co-writing songs like the disco-rock-fusion epic “Feel Alright.” (18 million streams on Spotify and counting.)
But the call of the wild never stopped pulling Gold—driven in large part by adventures he would go on as a kid with his dad to places like the Mojave Desert. And, after getting his pilot’s license, he decided to trust his instincts (and some good advice from a fellow pilot) by heading to Alaska. “I basically just bought a plane ticket, and knocked on all of [the local airline services’] doors with my resume in hand,” he laughs. For the first time in years, Gold wasn’t thinking like a musician anymore, and went back to enjoying some of his favorite bands—like Stereolab and Broadcast—solely as a listener. “It just kind of changed the way I heard music,” he explains. “I wasn’t analyzing it for the purpose of learning, for the purpose of becoming a better musician anymore. I was just kind of feeling it.”
But he couldn’t stay away from making music for long. After coming back to L.A., Gold began writing and recording again, and soon teamed up with former Poolside bandmate Filip Nikolic to develop his sound—something like a mishmash of Supertramp and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. When the two were honing in on the vibe they were going for, tapping into Spaghetti Western soundtracks and Tropicália, they realized they would ideally need a Farfisa organ, which Gold conveniently happened to have in storage—but hadn’t ever used before, and wasn’t sure would even work. Sure enough, though, “We plugged it in and it fired right up,” Gold marvels. “And that just became the backbone sound of that whole album.”
With Gold serving as the main writing and performing force of Mirror Tree, and Nikolic producing the set, while co-writing and performing on some tracks as well, Mirror Tree took flight. Gold would demo out songs and at his home studio, and then bring them to Nikolic’s studio, where they would work together to create grooves worthy of ELO for the chillwave generation. Songs like “300 Miles” and the title track “Mirror Tree” take the vintage Farfisa reverb and twist it into something modern, infused with a non-Western sensibility and a simultaneous Western accessibility. On rippers like “See It Through” and “Echoes Competing,” Gold combines his virtuosic keyboard abilities with earworm choruses and subtle poetics: “Cigarette thrown in the wind,” he sings in his falsetto on the latter track. “Mirror shows the glow / Driving on alone.”
As the project went on, the image of the Mirror Tree stuck with Gold—a metaphor for the way that light and life bounces off of people and things around us. Soon he realized that it was the appropriate title for the album and the band at large—and served as an ethos for everything that brought him to where he is today: “I’m not a super spiritual person, but whenever someone dies, I really get a lot of comfort that they are just kind of being constantly reflected on everyone,” he says. “Their presence—you get to keep it through the people that they affected.”
Toronto-based DJ and producer BAMBII shares a new single from her highly-anticipated EP Infinity Club, out August 4th. Hailed as one of the central voices elevating jungle in Toronto by Rolling Stone, BAMBII continues to bridge the gap between diaspora Caribbean communities with new single "Slip Slide," calling on North London producer and artist Ragz Originale (Skepta's "Shutdown," FKA Twigs, SOPHIE) and Amsterdam-based producer Lamsi, along with a self-directed video.
"Slip Slide" invokes the essence of the classic femme fatale archetype layered over reinterpreted dancehall, garage and jungle sounds. The new track follows her previous releases, "Wicked Gyal" featuring Lady Lykez, and "One Touch," which was deemed Best New Track by Pitchfork and featured in Apple's new MacBook Air commercial, all of which contribute to the atmosphere of Infinity Club.
Infinity Club finds BAMBII building on her already-impressive sonic repertoire, encapsulating the sound of a generation of Caribbean youth living between two worlds. On the heels of bringing her kinetic production style to Kelela's recent album Raven, this new EP establishes BAMBII as a trailblazing voice in the intersecting worlds of electronic and Caribbean music. The project opens the door to a limitless space that blurs the lines between memories and dreams, anchored by ecstatic production by BAMBII that centers on the solace one can find in the middle of a crowded dance floor. In BAMBII's telling, Infinity Club soundtracks an anonymous space holding a community of bodies all flowing to the same rhythm: "Infinity Club knows no age, or social construct. It's for everyone, everywhere. In all ways, always."
It was somewhere in remote Alaska that Michael Gold—who records and performs pop–infused psych-rock as Mirror Tree—began to realize that he was officially on the road less traveled. “I was flying around between all these native villages and all these little, muddy gravel air strips in a single-engine Cessna, in and out of snowstorms, and landing on ice-covered runways,” says Gold, who worked for several years as a pilot in the Last Frontier, and currently is based out of Los Angeles, and flies a 737 for a major airline. “Being a musician to me always felt like the path of least resistance a little bit, you know? And when I touched down in a place like Bethel, Alaska, I felt very firmly off of the path of least resistance.”
Until Gold decided to fly away from the world he knew, music was always right there in front of him. Gold’s mother, Sharon Robinson, is a Grammy-winning singer/songwriter who collaborated extensively with the late Leonard Cohen, co-writing some of his classics like “Everybody Knows.” Robinson was close friends with Cohen, and Cohen was Gold’s godfather: “He was definitely a big part of my world growing up, for sure,” Gold explains.
Raised in L.A., Gold was formally trained in classical and jazz piano, and the wonders and possibilities of music seeped into him. He continued pursuing music in college, studying jazz piano at nearby CalArts, where he lived in a barn in the remote town of Val Verde, which was at one point known as the “Black Palm Springs.” Around this time, he joined the indie-disco band Poolside as a keyboardist/vocalist, bouncing around the world on tour with them, as well co-writing songs like the disco-rock-fusion epic “Feel Alright.” (18 million streams on Spotify and counting.)
But the call of the wild never stopped pulling Gold—driven in large part by adventures he would go on as a kid with his dad to places like the Mojave Desert. And, after getting his pilot’s license, he decided to trust his instincts (and some good advice from a fellow pilot) by heading to Alaska. “I basically just bought a plane ticket, and knocked on all of [the local airline services’] doors with my resume in hand,” he laughs. For the first time in years, Gold wasn’t thinking like a musician anymore, and went back to enjoying some of his favorite bands—like Stereolab and Broadcast—solely as a listener. “It just kind of changed the way I heard music,” he explains. “I wasn’t analyzing it for the purpose of learning, for the purpose of becoming a better musician anymore. I was just kind of feeling it.”
But he couldn’t stay away from making music for long. After coming back to L.A., Gold began writing and recording again, and soon teamed up with former Poolside bandmate Filip Nikolic to develop his sound—something like a mishmash of Supertramp and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. When the two were honing in on the vibe they were going for, tapping into Spaghetti Western soundtracks and Tropicália, they realized they would ideally need a Farfisa organ, which Gold conveniently happened to have in storage—but hadn’t ever used before, and wasn’t sure would even work. Sure enough, though, “We plugged it in and it fired right up,” Gold marvels. “And that just became the backbone sound of that whole album.”
With Gold serving as the main writing and performing force of Mirror Tree, and Nikolic producing the set, while co-writing and performing on some tracks as well, Mirror Tree took flight. Gold would demo out songs and at his home studio, and then bring them to Nikolic’s studio, where they would work together to create grooves worthy of ELO for the chillwave generation. Songs like “300 Miles” and the title track “Mirror Tree” take the vintage Farfisa reverb and twist it into something modern, infused with a non-Western sensibility and a simultaneous Western accessibility. On rippers like “See It Through” and “Echoes Competing,” Gold combines his virtuosic keyboard abilities with earworm choruses and subtle poetics: “Cigarette thrown in the wind,” he sings in his falsetto on the latter track. “Mirror shows the glow / Driving on alone.”
As the project went on, the image of the Mirror Tree stuck with Gold—a metaphor for the way that light and life bounces off of people and things around us. Soon he realized that it was the appropriate title for the album and the band at large—and served as an ethos for everything that brought him to where he is today: “I’m not a super spiritual person, but whenever someone dies, I really get a lot of comfort that they are just kind of being constantly reflected on everyone,” he says. “Their presence—you get to keep it through the people that they affected.”
The artist explains that lead single, "See It Through",is a "lyrically self-aware piece of music - a song that took so long to write and underwent so many different versions that it ended up written about the process of writing it," while the second single "Tuesday"is "an instrumental palate-cleansing interlude inspired by classic film scores with an emphasis on string instruments and some 60’s inspired backing vocals."
Jonah Yano performs a Take Away Show for Blogoteque with 'song about the family house' from his latest album portrait of a dog.
The wooden stairs of a house, a friendly dog and an intimate song. Canadian artist Jonah Yano - famous for his jazz-inflected soul-pop - delivers a sweet rendition of 'song about the family house'. This track is a tribute to a place which he holds close to his heart. A house everyone in his immediate family has lived in at one point or another that's about to get torn down. "And how do I keep / The living room intact / Exactly as it was / If I have to commit it and rebuild it in my memory." Lonesome guitar lines and weary vocal melodies sublimate this affecting song we captured just for you.
The acclaimed singer-songwriter, Nick Waterhouse announces a new, upcoming album The Fooler out April 1 on Innovative Leisure / PRES with the release of the single "Hide And Seek."
“We had a joke in the studio,” says Nick Waterhouse. “Some of the guys were like, ‘Nick, you’re gonna end up at a press conference like Dylan in ’65: ‘Who’s The Fooler?’ ‘I don’t know, man, maybe it’s you! Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m becoming The Fooler right now…’”
The title of the sixth album from the Californian singer-songwriter is more than just the name of one of its dozen immaculate tracks. The Fooler is both a clue and a red herring. The Fooler is the observed and the observer, narrator and subject, truth and lie. The Fooler is the shadow and reflection of a city the artist knows sufficiently well to wander with his eyes closed, and a place which very possibly never even existed. The Fooler is not so much an unreliable narrator as a constantly shifting perspective. The Fooler is the new album by Nick Waterhouse, and it’s a lot.
“Many of the stories in the record come from that feeling of plasticity,” says Waterhouse. “What is memory? What is time? What is love between two human beings like in this imaginary city? It’s Cubist. A listener sees the angles of my life – and inexorably, my career – reflected in this work from all sides at once. I started thinking again about my university days, about modernist writers like Virginia Woolf, Christopher Isherwood, Hart Crane, or Ford Maddox Ford; about memory and how it betrays you; what you can see and what you can’t.”
Recorded by Mark Neill in Valdosta, Georgia, the album is a song-cycle of sorts, the arc of the album telling a tale of a city and its denizens. “There’s a phase shift that occurred writing this record,” says Waterhouse. “I had a breakthrough in how to tell stories in songs. It’s like an epiphany. I started realising how I could bend time in these words and a lot of the things that weave through the record. I have a perspective as a narrator now, instead of being the occupant of the songs.”
***
Nick Waterhouse is a modern American singer-songwriter who released his debut album, Time’s All Gone, in 2012. In his music you will hear echoes of things you might think you know, or believe you remember, filtered through the lens of a unique artistic perspective. You will hear rhythm and blues, garage rock, radio soul and wee-small-hours balladry – but reconfigured, made new. In Waterhouse’s music, the time is both now and then. The past is the present is the future. The sound is classic yet unclassifiable.
“I actually find it very fascinating,” he says. “I’m like, Where did this come from? Especially during this record, I started just becoming what Allen Ginsburg called a pure breath. I was becoming pure breath with my ideas.”
His last record, Promenade Blue (2021), was lushly orchestrated and widely acclaimed. Since then things have moved on – and fast. Waterhouse has relocated from California to France, ended a long term relationship, and hit upon an exciting new creative impetus. The sense right now is of a vortex whirring.
“The last tour I did was, in some ways, the most successful tour I’ve ever had, but it was a paper tiger,” he says. “We finished it and my inner compass said, We’re going to continue performing this, I’m going to live in this Promenade Blue world for a year – and that just isn’t how it works.” Cue The Fooler, messing with the narrative. “Instead, the pendulum swung hard in the other direction. It was not intentional. It really shook me how much of a punctuation Promenade Blue actually felt like. I was shutting a door with that, I did everything I could with that world. Now, we’re into this other sonic world.”
The Fooler is partly a farewell to, and reclamation of, a version of Waterhouse’s past existence framed by a city that is part dream, part reality and part potential. “I had this whole life in San Francisco, and a lot of that city changed and dissipated and was levelled by, let’s be honest, money. In several years it was like somebody cut off the oxygen there. It really did happen, and it was sad for me. A lot of what I wanted out of life was there. I went through processing a lot of that over the years.”
Matters reached a head on a return visit to see an old friend during the COVID lockdown. “It was during a particularly peak experience, walking a street in San Francisco so surreally empty it felt like a dream, that The Fooler began to occur. The city had been somewhere I physically and emotionally had left some time before, and now it felt like Pompeii. The physical abandonment finally mirrored my internal image of the place; a vacant stage where things had played out so vibrantly at one time. This street in the city looked exactly the same in mid-day as it had at midnight, so long ago. I had already let go, but this was an even more physical manifestation of: Wow, this is all gone.”
Following that existential epiphany, “The Fooler” came quickly into view. Discussing the stellar title track, Waterhouse says: “It’s about how your own heart and your memories can betray you in really nice ways. The rest of the songs were all orbiting around that. It was like, Wow, I’m writing my city record. It’s a parting shot, but to a place that was already gone. And now it’s this record. I find that to be deeply moving and satisfying.”
The beautiful black and white image on the album cover captures the mise-en-scène. It’s a previously unpublished photograph by the late, great photojournalist Jim Marshall of the legendary City Lights bookstore in San Francisco’s North Beach. Waterhouse used to live around the corner. “My local bars, Tosca and Specs, were directly across from City Lights. All of this life that I had was on that corner of Broadway and Columbus. There’s a lot of time slip, because that could have been me and my friends in that photo.” A pause. “Maybe I’m in there. I don’t know.”
***
The Fooler was recorded in Mark Neill’s studio, Soil of the South, in the small town of Valdosta, Georgia, with a small crew of musicians. A former room in a ballet school, Soil of the South is in the great tradition of American studios such as Chess and Sun. “Not the place that looks like a spaceship, but more like the place that looks like a dentist office in 1965,” says Waterhouse. “It can hold five people comfortably, but not more.” They tracked the record fast, in four or five days near the end of 2021. A further handful of days for overdubs and mixing early in 2022 and the record was finished.
The journey to Valdosta had begun, unbeknown to all, with the virtual gatherings Waterhouse convened on Instagram, which became an informal radio show of sorts. “I was thinking back to being at the record shop in San Francisco where people would come and make drinks on Friday after work, and we’d play records for each other. I started playing 45s on my Instagram Live, making drinks and talking about them. A lot of people were tuning in, and it meant a lot of people re-entered my life.”
One such person was Mark Neill. A lodestar of the west coast post-punk scene turned master of sound design, Neill is perhaps best known for earning a Grammy for his work on the Black Keys’ album, Brothers. “Mark has known about me for 20-odd years, and has always wanted to work with me,” says Waterhouse. “He’s a real phone guy, so he’d call me up. I wasn’t even looking to make a record out of those conversations. We were discussing the psychological geography of a lot of the records that shaped a time in my life, and shaped me now and in the future.”
The sound of The Fooler is the sound of this city haunted by song. A place filled with 45s produced by people like Bert Berns or released on Scepter, Wand, Atlantic and Verve and heard on the jukeboxes in Tosca, Specs and Trieste in North Beach. “The sound was the speaker over the record shop door in Lower Haight, or the sound systems of Mission and downtown and Tenderloin bars,” says Waterhouse. “Or the sound of the laptop playing the Velvet Underground bootleg, the one where the guy keeps ordering the Pernod, or Roy Orbison, in concert, with the lover pretending she wasn’t crying as she vacuumed the apartment; or crying as she locked herself in the bathroom of a matchbox-sized Chinatown apartment. It’s about how time slips between the times when these influences were recorded and my own life was lived in the moment.”
Neill, it turns out, proved a perfect foil for the concept of The Fooler. He plays tricks with time and space to create a sound that can’t quite be defined. “Mark is one of the last American producer/engineers who's truly connected to the audio tradition,” says Waterhouse. “Making this record was like going to see the kung fu master on the mountain. You can probably draw a through line from my very first record to this one, but this is something else entirely. The sonic landscape Mark designed is so much further into space, with reverb and depth. The record is in mono and it feels so lush.”
For the first time, Waterhouse relinquished a degree of control in the studio. He was content just to be The Artist. “I wasn’t going to be the producer, or come in with mapped-out arrangement concepts. I could just be, as Mark said, the punk in the mohair sweater; the guy who comes in with a guitar and plays something and he says, Wow, you’ve got to do that! He was very encouraging. A lot of his instincts were to steer me, not necessarily in the opposite direction of where I typically go with a piece of material, but I was making myself so open minded that I was like, ‘Oh, I would normally do this hard when he wants it softer. I would sing it low but he wants it higher.’ Nothing was hard baked, everything was so fragile. It was almost like a French New Wave approach to having these imperfections.”
The result is a record that offers up new riches and fresh perspectives with every spin. The Fooler is studded with highlights. From the hidden corners of ‘Hide & Seek’ and the roadhouse soul of ‘Play To Win’ to the primitive, attitudinal, chugging two-chord thrill of ‘Late In The Garden’, it builds inexorably to the drama of the title track and pulsing roll-and-rock of the final pay off, ‘Unreal, Immaterial’. Play it once and it sounds immediately like a collection of great songs. Play it again – and you will – and it feels like a novel or a film slowly unveiling its secrets, kaleidoscopic in its narrative complexity.
Since making the album and making his moves, Waterhouse feels loose and liberated. The Fooler’s spirit of flux has become a guiding principle. “Being in that new state, I think, made me malleable and free. I’m trying to be instinctive about doing this.” He laughs. “And, you know, it’s getting me into all kinds of interesting situations.”
