Animal, Surrender! / Tacoma Park

Animal, Surrender!

Back in 2023, bassist Peter Kerlin (Sunwatchers, Chris Forsyth Solar Motel Band, Bent Arcana, Everloving) and drummer Rob Smith (Gray/Smith, Rhyton, Pigeons) ritualistically burnt their passports, ate the ashes, and began conspiring together under the new guise of Animal, Surrender!.

Kerlin's spidery and melodious playing on his 8-string electric bass expands the expected language of that instrument into terrain more often inhabited by lutes or pianos, and begs to interweave with a drummer who slyly punctuates and propels against the grain. The duo's often wordless music is spun from threads of lost folksongs and polyrhythms into hypnotic, latticework compositions, melodies and beats shifting like cat's-cradles strung between their constantly moving hands.

Their eponymous debut on Ernest Jenning Record Co. in 2024 found haunting covers of Nick Drake and Mike Wexler lurking in a tangle of lean, progressive compositions crafted with the terse economy of post-rock but a pastoral, kaleidoscopic vision in its eyes.

Their follow up album, A Boot for Every Bane (2025 EJRC), builds upon the incantatory language of the first while inviting the mercurial talents and instincts of pipe organist Curt Sydnor (Greg Saunier, Yonatan Gat, Peni Candra Rini) into the magick circle.

From historic St. John's Church in Richmond, VA, where Patrick Henry challenged the young nation to give him liberty or give him death, Sydnor's organ breathes charged air to help the group coax out troubled spirits buried deep in the American dirt for a spiritual reckoning. Along with many new compositions that advance their original cause, they resurrect and reanimate several old American standards: the seductive and sub-tropical "Poinciana" made famous by Ahmad Jamal's trio, and the untraceable river song "Shenandoah," known from deep renditions by Belafonte, Dylan, and Tony Rice.

When the animal catches its own distorted reflection in the rolling river, what is left to do but surrender to the song?

https://animalsurrender.bandcamp.com/album/animal-surrender

Tacoma Park

Back in 2016, Ben Felton, a solo guitarist who’s also known for his work with Lightbulbs in the Trees and Shark Quest, caught John Harrison (Jphono1) playing a solo set of vocal-lead songs that were tied together by a looper pedal and energetic improvisation. Harrison’s use of guitar loops was something that Felton could relate to in his own music, and that ignited the spark of inspiration. Felton invited Harrison to play a show with him and future Tacoma Park-collaborator, Nathan Golub, on the night after the oncoming presidential election.

Under the grim atmosphere of that fateful night, the healing and transportive powers of music reigned supreme, and their individual sets made that spark of Felton’s inspiration burn even brighter. After the gig, Felton and Harrison talked shop and struck up a conversation about jamming as a duo. Once the pair combined forces, the sound they forged together was a unique and adventurous blend of hypnotic electronics and guitar soli music. A Piedmont-based variation of kosmiche musik was born.

To develop their songs, the duo creates a versatile framework of minimalist drones and loose chord progressions to later improvise over with layers of overdubbed cosmic synths and guitars. With their second album being a pandemic record, they learned to build up and shape their songs by hand from individual pieces. They often cut up improvised jams, splice together the best and most interesting parts, process and manipulate those recordings, and then layer in new instrumental tracks. The resulting mix is a hallucinatory soundscape that transports the listener far away to hazy yet colorful distant planes.

After three stellar albums and several singles later, Tacoma Park is still finding new paths to follow within the spectrum of their distinctive brand of astral Americana music. On Baltimore, their latest album for Centripetal Force, the duo build upon their sound and vastly broaden their horizons with perhaps their most expansive and exploratory release yet. From celestial dronescapes to rural psychedelic boogies, Harrison and Felton have stretched their wings and crafted a lush sonic world for listeners to completely immerse themselves into. If you ever need an escape, just place the needle on this record, close your eyes, and Tacoma Park will take you somewhere peaceful and endlessly dreamy.

https://tacomapark.bandcamp.com/