Tag: Taos NM

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Tan Cologne Team Up With Trentemøller on a Minimalist and Dreamy Rework of “In Resin”

Enigmatic Taos, NM-based duo Tan Cologne — Lauren Green and Marissa Macias — released their third album Unknown Beyond last month through Labrador Records. Unlike their previously released material, Unknown Beyond sees Green and Macias reaching for the heavens and an intangible greater existence; the infinite and unexplainable while embracing the beauty of timeless uncertainty. 

Written, performed and recorded entirely by the duo at their Taos, New Mexico-based home, the album found the pair seeking solitude and retreat as they attempted to come to terms with the personal loss of family, friends and childhood homes — within a relatively short period of time. The album’s creative process quickly became a therapeutic outlet for grieving, dealing, changing and understanding new life transitions and ways of being, with each track being a part of the story of the entire album. 

The album’s material is centered around a more spiritual process. “We looked for signs and signals during the recording process” the duo says in press notes. “If we saw a shooting star, imagined a fire burning on a hill, or remembered an old satellite dish in someone’s yard, we explored that lyrically. Those visual guides became our pathways to the album. They were the signs to move forward.”

Interweaving and layering hypnotic beats, hazy shoegazer textures, abstract live drum patterns and sounds of searching for signals — of comfort and communication — from the invisible web, Unknown Beyond may arguably be their most immersive and emotive work to date. 

In the lead up to the album’s I written about three of the album’s previously release singles, “Cloud of Mirrors,” “Infinity“ and “Cool Star.”

The duo recently teamed up with Trentemøller on a reworking of Unknown Beyond closing track “In Resin.” The album track is a slow-burning and hazy tune featuring swirling, almost painterly, reverb-drenched, shoegazer guitar textures. While recalling A Storm In Heaven, the arrangement serves as a lush bed for Green’s and Macias’ dreamily ethereal harmonies.

The Trentemøller reworking retains the duo’s dreamily ethereal harmonies but replaces most of the shoegazer guitar textures with a looping, twinkling and eerily beautiful piano figure, which emphasizes the mysterious vibe of the song while giving it an old-timey feel and sound.

“In Resin” encapsulates the entire project thematically, as well as the duo’s experiences over the lat few years. “It talks about being everything once and then being it all again, and living several lives at the same time,” the band says. “‘In Resin’ is a special track that we spiritually found ourselves oscillating between leaving it as a rare gem to discover on the album or presenting as a focus,” they continue. “We opted for the mystery, but Trentemøller dove into it.”
 
The band expands, “A few years ago, Trentemøller connected with us and our sound. Now into the present and future, he offered to rework one of our tracks from our new album and selected ‘In Resin.’ He finished the new interpretation while we were on tour together in Europe. We feel our music is a communication and we are honored to continue ‘In Resin’’s sonic conversation with Trentemøller.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Tan Cologne Shares Celestial “Cool Star”

Enigmatic Taos, NM-based duo Tan Cologne — Lauren Green and Marissa Macias — have released work rooted in terrestrial and earthen landscapes: Their debut, 2020’s Cave Vaults on the Moon in New Mexico explored the topography of cultures and subcultures on the surface of New Mexico. Their sophomore album, 2022’s Earth Visions of Water Spaces was inspired by past, present and future water and waterways, embodying the power of water and how it has shaped our planet. 2023’s Pescetrullo (soundscapes) captured a series of on-site instrumental and field recordings made in the remote architectural Pescetrullo in Puglia, Italy, immortalizing the contrasts of ancient buildings, new bold structures, insects, and lapping water of the surrounding environment.

The New Mexico-based duo’s third album Unknown Beyond is slated for a Friday release through Labrador Records. Unlike their previously released material, Unknown Beyond sees Green and Macias reaching for the heavens and an intangible greater existence; the infinite and unexplainable while embracing the beauty of timeless uncertainty. 

Written, performed and recorded entirely by the duo at their Taos, New Mexico-based home, the album found the pair seeking solitude and retreat as they attempted to come to terms with the personal loss of family, friends and childhood homes — within a relatively short period of time. The album’s creative process quickly became a therapeutic outlet for grieving, dealing, changing and understanding new life transitions and ways of being, with each track being a part of the story of the entire album. 

The album reportedly sees Green and Macias seeking a more spiritual process. “We looked for signs and signals during the recording process” they say. “If we saw a shooting star, imagined a fire burning on a hill, or remembered an old satellite dish in someone’s yard, we explored that lyrically. Those visual guides became our pathways to the album. They were the signs to move forward.”

Interweaving and layering hypnotic beats, hazy shoegazer textures, abstract live drum patterns and sounds of searching for signals — of comfort and communication — from the invisible web, Unknown Beyond may arguably be their most immersive and emotive work to date. 

In the lead up to the album’s release later this week, I’ve written about two of the album’s previously release singles, “Cloud of Mirrors,” and “Infinity.“

The album’s third and final pre-release single, the slow-burning and celestial album opening track “Cool Star” features swelling, billowing and swirling guitar textures serving as a lush bed for the duo’s dreamily delivered lyrics describing seeing a shooting star — and the belief act that you can communicate with the beyond; that there are signs and signals all over, if you’re paying attention. “It’s also our sensory transmission of the shade, tide, and temperature shift from the moon and planets as they orbit, and the coolness and pull made by them,” they add. 

The accompanying video features lost, found and archived imagery that’s be been carefully edited and stitched together by filmmaker and frequent collaborator Carly Short. Fittingly, it features cosmic imagery, cars drag racing and more.
 
The duo have a handful of Stateside dates, which you can check out below.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Tan Cologne Returns with Meditative and Trance-Inducing “Infinity”

Enigmatic Taos, NM-based duo Tan Cologne — Lauren Green and Marissa Macias — have released work rooted in terrestrial and earthen landscapes: Their debut, 2020’s Cave Vaults on the Moon in New Mexico explored the topography of cultures and subcultures on the surface of New Mexico. Their sophomore album, 2022’s Earth Visions of Water Spaces was inspired by past, present and future water and waterways, embodying the power of water and how it has shaped our planet. 2023’s Pescetrullo (soundscapes) captured a series of on-site instrumental and field recordings made in the remote architectural Pescetrullo in Puglia, Italy, immortalizing the contrasts of ancient buildings, new bold structures, insects, and lapping water of the surrounding environment.

The New Mexico-based duo’s forthcoming third album Unknown Beyond is slated for a June 20, 2025 release through Labrador Records. Unlike their previously released material, Unknown Beyond sees Green and Macias reaching for the heavens and an intangible greater existence; the infinite and unexplainable while embracing the beauty of timeless uncertainty. 

Written, performed and recorded entirely by the duo at their Taos, New Mexico-based home, the album found the pair seeking solitude and retreat as they attempted to come to terms with the personal loss of family, friends and childhood homes — within a relatively short period of time. The album’s creative process quickly became a therapeutic outlet for grieving, dealing, changing and understanding new life transitions and ways of being, with each track being a part of the story of the entire album. 

The album reportedly sees Green and Macias seeking a more spiritual process. “We looked for signs and signals during the recording process” they say. “If we saw a shooting star, imagined a fire burning on a hill, or remembered an old satellite dish in someone’s yard, we explored that lyrically. Those visual guides became our pathways to the album. They were the signs to move forward.”

Interweaving and layering hypnotic beats, hazy shoegazer textures, abstract live drum patterns and sounds of searching for signals — of comfort and communication — from the invisible web, Unknown Beyond may arguably be their most immersive and emotive work to date. 

Last month, I wrote about “Cloud of Mirrors,” a woozily meditative track, featuring swirling and painterly, shoegazer-like guitar textures and Green’s and Macias’ soaring harmonies ethereally floating over a bed of pulsating, metronomic-like drum machine click. Sonically, “Cloud of Mirrors” marks a sonic and thematic shift for the New Mexico-based outfit as they embrace a richer blend of electronic elements to their sound, all while seemingly recalling A Storm in Heaven and Souvlaki-era shoegaze. 

“’Cloud of Mirrors’ is about life happening to you and having to deal with whatever is handed to you – a chemtrail above, being ‘over it,’ knowing we are all interconnected and a part of the disaster and the beauty,” the duo explain. “The idea that we are a mirrored image of the sky – manmade or natural, or even simulated. A reflection of everything around you being internally present.”

Unknown Beyond‘s latest single “Infinity” is a trance-inducing, meditative song anchored around gently swirling, reverb-based shoegazer guitar textures serving as a lush and hazy soundscape for the pair’s dreamy, reverb-soaked vocals. The rack ruminates on shifts in form as we move through life — and the untold end that all physical beings will inevitably face.

“‘Infinity’ is about an endless drift into the infinite,” the band explains. “The lyrics ‘All pass through known’ evoke the comfort of knowing we all enter and leave, though the definitive dimension is the unknown beyond.” The duo continue, “We understand the passage through physical form, and take into account the infinite depth outside of our comprehension.”

Directed and shot by the duo in Taos, the equally meditative, accompanying video for “Infinity” follows their friend Ricardo de Jesus Tejada, walking around Taos for a stop to check in on his horse Lupita, before heading back home.

“Our music video circles a day or dissolving timeline of a man on a walk and how he finds himself in a meditative drift with a horse, and then returns to the beginning and also the end,” the duo explain.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Tan Cologne Shares Hazy, “A Storm in Heaven”-like “Cloud of Mirrors”

Enigmatic Taos, NM-based duo Tan Cologne — Lauren Green and Marissa Macias — have released work rooted in terrestrial and earthen landscapes: Their debut, 2020’s Cave Vaults on the Moon in New Mexico explored the topography of cultures and subcultures on the surface of New Mexico. Their sophomore album, 2022’s Earth Visions of Water Spaces was inspired by past, present and future water and waterways, embodying the power of water and how it has shaped our planet. 2023’s Pescetrullo (soundscapes) captured a series of on-site instrumental and field recordings made in the remote architectural Pescetrullo in Puglia, Italy, immortalizing the contrasts of ancient buildings, new bold structures, insects, and lapping water of the surrounding environment.

The New Mexico-based duo’s forthcoming third album Unknown Beyond is slated for a June 20, 2025 release through Labrador Records. Unlike their previously released material, Unknown Beyond sees Green and Macias reaching for the heavens and an intangible greater existence; the infinite and unexplainable while embracing the beauty of timeless uncertainty.

Written, performed and recorded entirely by the duo at their Taos, New Mexico-based home, the album found the pair seeking solitude and retreat as they attempted to come to terms with the personal loss of family, friends and childhood homes — within a relatively short period of time. The album’s creative process quickly became a therapeutic outlet for grieving, dealing, changing and understanding new life transitions and ways of being, with each track being a part of the story of the entire album.

The album reportedly sees Green and Macias seeking a more spiritual process. “We looked for signs and signals during the recording process” they say. “If we saw a shooting star, imagined a fire burning on a hill, or remembered an old satellite dish in someone’s yard, we explored that lyrically. Those visual guides became our pathways to the album. They were the signs to move forward.”

Interviewing and layering hypnotic beats, hazy shoegeazer textures, abstract live drum patterns and sounds of searching for signals — of comfort and communication — from the invisible web, Unknown Beyond may arguably be their most immersive and emotive work to date.

Unknown Beyond‘s latest single, the woozy yet meditative “Cloud of Mirrors” features swirling and painterly, shoegazer-like guitar textures and Green’s and Macias’ soaring harmonies ethereally floating over a bed of pulsating, metronomic-like drum machine click. Sonically, “Cloud of Mirrors” marks a sonic and thematic shift for the New Mexico-based outfit as they embrace a richer blend of electronic elements to their sound, all while recalling A Storm in Heaven and Souvlaki-era shoegaze.

“’Cloud of Mirrors’ is about life happening to you and having to deal with whatever is handed to you – a chemtrail above, being ‘over it,’ knowing we are all interconnected and a part of the disaster and the beauty,” the duo explain. “The idea that we are a mirrored image of the sky – manmade or natural, or even simulated. A reflection of everything around you being internally present.”

Fittingly, the accompanying video is a hazy in-studio performance featuring seemingly endless reflections and refractions, as though looking at the duo performing through a mirror.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Waldo Witt Shares Trippy “Without A Sound”

Chapel Hill, NC-based singer/songwriter and musician Waldo Witt embraces 60s and 70s psychedelia — think Todd Rundgren, King Crimson, and Brian Wilson — alongside a continued adoration of 80s soft rock and disco, which results in a vibrant hook-driven sound, paired with structural twists and turns.

Witt’s latest album Long Daze, Dark Nights is slated for a February 24, 2023 release. The album further cementing the Chapel Hill-based artist’s nostalgia-tined song, but it doesn’t linger too long in the past. While hook-heavy throwback odes are abundant, the album’s material was recorded with modern production techniques and is centered around contemporary thematic concerns. Informed by the past few tumultuous years, the album thematically touches upon uncertainty, instability and unpredictability.

The album’s creative process began during the summer of 2020 in Taos, NM. Witt, his wife road-tripped through much of the pandemic, and much of the album’s lyrics were written while traveling across isolated areas throughout the country. including rural Montana and Colorado. So the material was rooted in introspection and soul-searching.

He also wound up in a variety of studios, where the ensuring musical collaborations were with new and old friends alike. Much of the album’s recording took place at James Petralli’s Austin- based Radio Milk Studios and Witt’s Chapel Hill home.

The album’s latest single “Without A Sound” is a dense, lysergic song featuring blown-out drums, twinkling keys and soaring hooks paired with Witt’s plaintive falsetto. The end result is a song that to my ears sounds as though it were drawing from Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys and Tame Impala. The song — to me, at least — bridges several different eras in psych music in a slick yet logical fashion.

“This was one of the last songs I wrote for the album, I was really embracing some of my earlier musical influences – the ones that first got me really excited about music like Syd Barrett and Brian Wilson,” Witt explains. “So it’s kind of this psychedelic journey through time, looking through a lens of bright eyed bliss and innocence, and using that lens to try to make sense of or understand the chaos of recent years.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Over the past couple of years of this site’s nearly 10 year history, I’ve managed to spill quite a bit of virtual ink covering Stockholm, Sweden-based multi-instrumentalist, electro pop artist, electro pop producer and Labrador Records label head Johan Angergård and his various projects including Djustin, Club 8 and his solo recording project The Legends.

Since the early 00s, Angergård has released six albums, including 2009’s self-titled debut, 2015’s It’s Love and 2017’s Nightshift, which was a decidedly From Here to Eternity/fFrom Here to Eternity . . . And Back-era Giorgio Moroder-like affair.  Along with that, the prolific Stockholm-based multi-instrumentalist, electronic music artist, producer, label held and JOVM mainstay has released a number of critically applauded, blogosphere dominating singles. He’s currently working on his forthcoming seventh full-length The Legends album — but in the meantime, his latest single, “Fascinating” finds the JOVM mainstay collaborating with emerging, Taos, NM-based psych pop duo Tan Cologne, who will be releasing their full-length debut Cave Vaults on the Moon in New Mexico this year through Labrador Records.

Clocking in at 83 seconds, the decidedly lo-fi song is a breezy and infectious track centered around shimmering and swirling layers of guitars, thumping percussion and ethereal vocals that evokes the sensation of diving through warm water — and of being awoken from a surreal, feverish dream.