Steady Sun

Steady Sun is the brainchild of Dylan Nowik, a songwriter and producer who has been quietly making his mark on the worldwide music scene. He has written for and served as the primary guitarist for Clairo's most recent records; has performed on Jimmy Fallon with both Clairo and Black Thought; has had music covered by Angel Olsen; and has written for El Michels Affair, Norah Jones, and Leon Bridges.

JOY marks the fourth album from the Catskill, NY–based psychedelic project Steady Sun, who formed in 2011 in NYC. The record is a transformative, kaleidoscopic journey, birthed from many transcontinental trips taken from Nowik's Catskill home to Los Angeles, the primary recording location and current home of producer Wayne Gordon, former head engineer of Brooklyn's Daptone Records.

The record explores the idea of escapism reinterpreted as the practice of arriving somewhere more idyllic—inner peace as an ever-looming, benevolent phantom waiting to be acknowledged. Rarely, if ever, are these questions asked explicitly in JOY's dense, color-saturated, undulating nine songs. Instead, subversive exuberance is expressed through fuzzed-out slide guitar harmonies lilting over elaborate choral arrangements, and the optimistic notion of escape-as-arrival can be felt through the playfully mercurial anomalies in song structure that color the record throughout.

The desire to create something exuberant and true-to-craft guided Nowik and his compatriots in creating JOY. The record is at once a celebration of influences and an act of deliberate irreverence. In "Rosie," Steady Sun blends equal parts Floyd and David Crosby while the lyrics warn a soon-to-be-born child of the beauties and terrors it will encounter. The ambitious medley "Sundries" recalls the neo-psychedelia of MGMT's sprawling "Siberian Breaks," and "Little Death" sounds as if Terrance Mckenna's DMT Elves just discovered Madlib.

Within the technicolor swirl, the Sisyphean weight of life can nonetheless be felt. The record is by no means a denial of suffering; instead, it serves as a display of the many facets of existence, transmuted into something intriguing, otherworldly, and joyful.

Nowik’s other projects include Camp Saint Helene (recently featured on Angel Olsen’s record, Cosmic Waves Vol. 1), Astrud Gardener, and The Fascinating Chimera Project.