Trevor Shelley de Brauw of Pelican Announces Uptown Solo LP; New Track Streaming
Guitarist Trevor Shelley de Brauw of Chicago instrumentalists Pelican will make his solo debut with Uptown, a collection of ambient pieces due out early next year via The Flenser. An initial track, titled “They Keep Bowing,” reveals textural atmospherics working in layers probably looped through but perhaps built one on top of the other, either way to satisfyingly rich tonal effect. I wouldn’t necessarily call it out of the range of what one might anticipate a solo record from de Brauw would bring, knowing the kind of heavy post-rock sprawl to which Pelican can be prone, but it’s a definite expansion on the theme, if nothing else, and it seems fair to imagine that Uptown will also serve as the beginning of a broader exploration of a solo aesthetic for de Brauw, making it all the more noteworthy as his first outing.
I haven’t heard the full thing yet, but we’ve got a while to go before Feb. 10 gets here, so I’ll hope the opportunity comes my way somewhere between now and then. The cut below makes a solid argument why and arrives accompanied by PR wire details:
GUITARIST TREVOR SHELLEY DE BRAUW ANNOUNCES DEBUT SOLO ALBUM, PREMIERES SONG
Uptown due out February 10th, 2017 from The Flenser / Listen to “They Keep Bowing” now
Chicago-based guitarist Trevor Shelley de Brauw (Pelican, RLYR) has announced the release of his first solo album – a collection of power-ambient compositions – entitled Uptown. Due out February 10th, 2017 on San Francisco’s acclaimed experimental label The Flenser, Uptown is a stream of consciousness sustained for too long, an aural pendulum swinging between poles of murky distress and cathartic resolve that takes shape somewhere in the hazy valleys between rock, ambient and experimental music. Listen to the album’s first single, “They Keep Bowing,” today.
Trevor Shelley de Brauw’s 20 year musical career has manifested as an exploration of the vast sonic possibilities of the guitar. Uptown marks a departure from the riff-oriented song writing of Pelican, taking a plaintive approach that unravels the meditative depth of washed-out riffs, deconstructed drones, and carefully controlled feedback. The album delves into complex dimensions of deeply layered textures: an evocation of haunting melodicism that shares more common ground with Brian Eno’s ambient work and drone wizards Barn Owl than it does a metal record. Written and recorded over the span of nearly a decade, Uptown represents a scrapbook from a formative era in de Brauw’s life, bookended by a stint on a remote tobacco farm in North Carolina and his return to the anxiety-ridden urban eccentricities of Chicago’s historic Uptown neighborhood.
Uptown is due for release on Feb 10th, 2017 from The Flenser. Stay tuned for more songs to premiere and pre-order info to surface soon.
Uptown track listing:
1. A New Architecture
2. Distinct Frequency
3. They Keep Bowing
4. You Were Sure
5. Turn Up For What
6. From The Black Soil Poetry and Song Sprang
https://www.facebook.com/mgrmd/
http://migrationmedia.com/
http://theflenser.com/
https://soundcloud.com/flenserrecords/
