Way Grouper

Hilary Woods’ artistry is one of rare emotive reach. Her minimalist and compositional finesse combine with densely layered atmospheric instrumentation and dreamlike vocals to create music rich with both delicacy and intensity. The Sunday Times hailed her early solo recordings as “a revelation.”

Following the ambitious quadruple-LP sprawl of 2016's R M H Q: Headquarters, veteran New Zealand guitarist Roy Montgomery composed a much shorter album and invited several female singers to grace his rolling, multi-dimensional guitar soundscapes. Montgomery wrote the lyrics as well as the music on the album's first side, while the guests on the second side expressed their own thoughts. "Apparition" begins the album with a slow fade-in of countless layers of guitars, resembling thick sheets of rain.

“Who are we when we’re alone?” The simplest questions are often the most difficult to answer. In April of 2018, Drowse’s Kyle Bates left his home in Portland, OR for an artist residency in barren northern Iceland. Much of Bates' time there was spent in self-imposed isolation, giving him ample space to ponder the nature of solitude, and what it means to be "closed" or "open" to the world. Upon returning home, Bates worked obsessively. Maya Stoner, a longtime creative partner, sometimes came to sing, but recordings where mostly done alone. The dichotomy of his Icelandic musings materialized in a very real way as he neglected his personal relationships in favor of his art. While he was confronting his life-long fear of intimacy, and reconciling himself to a diagnosis of Bipolar 1, Bates found that the means he employed to conquer these obstacles–self reflection through art–carried with them an equal measure of misery. Light Mirror, Drowse’s second album for The Flenser, is a subtle exploration of these contradictory attitudes and their consequences that can be heard as an artifact of sonic self-sabotage.

Lifetime of Love is the debut album by Moon Diagrams, the solo recording project of Deerhunter co-founder and drummer Moses John Archuleta.

2017 debut solo album by Meg Duffy of Mega Bog and the Kevin Morby Band. "Singer, songwriter and guitarist from Upstate New York Meg Duffy, aka Hand Habits, has been putting in her time on the road and in the studio over the past two years with Pacific Northwest band Mega Bog, and the Kevin Morby Band, making an impression on everyone she comes across with her natural charisma and uncharted talent as a multi-instrumentalist.