After releasing music under many different monikers, including Teen Daze, Two Bicycles and Pacific Coliseum, Jamison Isaak has released the first music under his own name with EP1. Recorded between his home studio and Protection Island Recording (with Jonathan Anderson) in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, this EP navigates through four serene piano pieces. Anderson, who collaborated with Isaak on Themes For Dying Earth (Teen Daze), not only provided the blissful pedal steel parts, but also engineered a good portion of the record over one grey, rainy afternoon which is evident in the final version.
The EP opens with Sharalee, and it sets the tone for the EP, these gloriously melancholy tunes, sugared with almost static strings and the swoon of the steel guitar. More than that though, is the sound of the workings, the creak of the pedals, the seat, maybe even the rain outside.
Follow on Upstairs is similarly beautiful, its new-classical hue covered with slow moving melodies and snatches of the steel guitar, while the octaves in the piano in Wind almost seems like the sound of a heart breaking. The EP closes with the gentle ambient soundscape of More, as if the listener drifts off somewhere, into this land of dreams and heartbreak completely.
Settle into your favourite chair, turn up the fire, and bury your head into it
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