Sacramento duo of Patrick Hills and Morgan Fox met through their involvements in punk and experimental music. Meeting through encounters at Hills’ Earthtone studio, they decided to forge their own path together and make some music. This initially resulted in a mini-album as Blank Gloss, out at the beginning of last year — what now seems like a lifetime ago. Since then, they recorded a full album, Melt, where they wanted to strip things back a little bit and just let the music flow.
“We tried to go into it without many preconceived notions,” Fox recalls. “We tried not to overthink what was happening or spend too much time hyper-focused on any one thing. We found it more enjoyable to make and to listen to when we just let whatever was happening happen.”
The thrashing punk has been mellowed and put far in the closet for another day with Melt. Instead, the pair have created an album of the sublime, taking the listener out to large, open landscapes –sometimes to hazy deserts with orange and brown mountains off in the distance, and others, lush and green with rolling fields for as far as the eye can see.
They create an album built around guitars drenched in reverb that often allow notes to linger in place like a breeze rustling in the trees. Soft electronic pads and pianos gently accompany these guitars, with pedal steels and occasional drums. It all combines into something beautiful, riveting and downright serene. The 42 minutes pass in a flash with each track breezing from one to the next. This is for late nights and early mornings or a trek somewhere beautiful outdoors.
Pick up your copy here via Kompakt.
