HALF SHADOW
Full EPK: https://www.halfshadow.world/about
For the better part of a decade Half Shadow, the midnight-blue songwriting moniker of Portland’s Jesse Carsten, has been unfurling an enigmatic, windswept music: equal parts earthen folk and cosmic rock and roll, with a primal pop experimentalism seeping from the edges. Wedding an expansive, transcendent poetics to a fiercely home-spun aesthetic, Carsten creates joyful, eclectic song-collages that embrace the experimental singer-songwriter tradition of the Pacific Northwest while enfolding an array of canonical art-voicings; songs range from abstract finger-picked poems to heart-tugged acapella treaties and repetitive art-rock incantations. Half Shadow’s performances—joining quiet song-spinning with performance art, poetry recitation, and instrumental guitar improvisations—are recognized as strange, dazzling, immersive events, inspiring a passionate following in the Northwest. The Portland Mercury has praised Carsten’s shows as “invariably powerful, full of wonder, and unlike anything else." Following a string of cassette and CD-R releases, Carsten birthed the first fully fledged Half Shadow LP in 2019,Dream Weather Its Electric Song, which was hailed by Antiquated Future as “a carefully thought-out work…of poetic devotionals to the natural world, the subconscious, other realms.” The record was celebrated for its ability to work tangible magic: as Queen City Sounds put it, Dream Weather deconstructs “familiar songwriting styles, bringing the logical mind into alternate pathways of operating.” Carsten's non-linear and environmental dream-lyrics place him in the company of like-minded contemporaries such as Mega Bog's Erin Birgy, Yves Jarvis, and Ruth Garbus, for whom songwriting is an attempt at surreal levels of poetic feeling. Having been called “one of Portland’s best kept secrets,” it is paradoxically Half Shadow’s mystery-inspired, DIY ethos that spirits Carsten’s ever-evolving project out of the home-recordist’s cave and onto more illuminated stages. When it does, Half Shadow is ready to wrap listeners in the dark, sparkling hues and mossy undergrowth that have become the poetic trademark of this singular undertaking. Half Shadow's newest record At Home With My Candlesis out now on Bud Tapes and Dove Cove Records.
At Home With My Candles, Half Shadow’s third LP is an album of mythopoetic paeans to the domestic uncanny—the mysterious and unseen worlds experienced at home. Recorded almost entirely in quarantine, the record’s songs chart the beauty and strangeness that domestic life can conjure, at once perfectly ordinary and deceptively mystical. Long the enigmatic moniker of Portland’s Jesse Carsten, Half Shadow’s new songs expand the project’s intimate poetics into something more encompassing, without ever losing a sense of tenderness. Intimate folk songs magnify into anthemic chant-alongs, lo-fi dirges, and primal pop experiments. Genres blend with a subtly psychedelic grace, with Carsten’s voice delivering dream-laden poems, always at the center of the sound. Listeners are sung into an interiorized sphere: an otherworldly landscape of tension, languor, and mystery. From the place of home a whole cosmos fans out. Featuring contributions from such west-coast luminaries as Zach Burba (Iji, Mega Bog, Dear Nora), Jem Marie (The Ghost Ease), Julian Morris (Layperson, Post Moves), and mastering from Kevin Christopher (Oh Rose, Ancient Pools), the album’s songs emerge in vivid technicolor, engaging listeners in a process of seeing our world, our selves, and in this case the homes we haunt, with new, uncanny vision.
Kind Words for At Home With My Candles:
"Has the rare distinction of...[sounding] very little like anything else." Alt 77
"At Home With My Candles was recorded during quarantine, and as such directs its attention toward the ordinary/odd duality so often found behind closed doors. These conditions prove fertile ground for Half Shadow’s poetic sensibilities, an uncanny marriage between personal insight and a wider mystical experience." Various Small Flames
"Listening to Half Shadow’s avant garde musical stylings is the sonic version of looking through a kaleidoscope. Each piece of art presents unique, vibrant, and purposeful layers that dance together in one unified, magnificent tapestry. It’s early, but we think we’ve already found one of 2022’s most intriguing new releases." Underground Music Collective
"At Home with My Candles calls on the listener to inquire within themselves, in their secret, shy self, what their true vision consists of; what their soul is really made of.” Tome to the Weather Machine
YAARA VALEY
https://antiquatedfuture.bandcamp.com/album/deshecha
Yaara Valey is a multidisciplinary performer and sound artist of Jewish Latinx heritage based in Portland. She utilizes looping technology to create luscious vocal-based live transmissions. Yaara trained in movement based expressive arts therapy and her work is centered in somatic reconnection. In addition to her solo work, she collaboratively creates work for dance, film, and other performance art projects.
"Most projects of this nature have a wholly ethereal feel to them, but Valey's voice and some of the musical settings evince a somewhat earthy quality that is unusual. It's as though her work emerges from a smoky room rather than the sun-dappled peaks which are the home turf for most of her folkier kin." The Wire
"[A] fusion of ethereal melodies, poetic writing and a whole range of textures and tones, layered over one another in translucent layers like ghostly strata of bygone times...[the sound] is continually shifting, never settling into an easily-defined shape." Various Small Flames
"A kind-hearted ghost that emerges gracefully from textured mists." Autumn Roses
"Yaara Valey leads a seance of one with lute, breath, and a mastery of mixing chanted loops, reverbed out tribal percussion, delay-heavy pluck, and passing tech anomaly. Her dynamic, contralto delivery is only matched by an expertly layered mile-high pile of harmony & counterpoint; the end result is nothing short of bewitching."Cassette Gods
LAYPERSON
https://layperson.bandcamp.com/album/the-divide
Julian Morris (b. 1989; Boston, MA) has been writing and recording as Layperson for 10 years. Culling inspiration from salt of the earth lyricists like Iris Dement and Townes Van Zandt, Morris’ music is earnest and true to his life experience. Morris transitioned in 2015, which permanently altered his singing voice. Re-learning the voice as a new instrument allowed Morris deeper access to expression. He moved to Portland, OR in 2008. Morris writes and records the majority of his music from home. He has released records with Portland based label Good Cheer and NY based Lobby Art.