Loner Deluxe
"Field Recordings"
RR48
(CD and Digital)
Release: March 5th 2021
Rusted Rail is pleased to announce the release of 'Field Recordings', the third album from Loner Deluxe.
The musical alter ego of Rusted Rail's Keith Wallace, Loner Deluxe presents the sequel to 2017's 'Songs I Taped Off the Radio'
cassette release which featured a phalanx of collaborators. 'Field Recordings' finds Loner Deluxe slimmed down to a core trio of
Wallace, Cecilia Danell (A Lilac Decline) and Brian Kelly (So Cow).
The album draws on a wide palette of sounds, from lo-fi bedroom pop with a fuzzy, garage rock edge, to evocative electronica, propelled by the most melodious of bass lines; from stoned, deadpan, hazy hip-hop to instrumentals that sound like they could have slipped down the back of a couch at the Radiophonic Workshop studio, only now emerging into the light of day. What unites these seemingly disparate sounds is the very intimate feel of these handmade recordings. Building on his previously self-invented genre of 'UFOlk', the influence of the cosmos
continues on this collection - space is still the place.
Although written and recorded in pre-Covid times (bar the pandemic pop song 'Viral Hit'), lyrically this is a loose concept album about technophobia, nuclear fallout, paranoia, dead satellites, vandalised phone boxes, gentrification and environmental collapse. These may be field recordings from apocalyptic times, but don't let the dark themes
detract from the fact that these are inherently catchy and melodic tunes that crack a smile in the face of our potential impending demise.
Veteran radio broadcaster and DJ Cian Ó Cíobháin (An Taobh Tuathail) says of the album:
"I absolutely love this album and make no mistake this is an album. This is not just a collection of tunes thrown together, the whole thing strikes me as making sense in the way that it's sequenced: an LP that deserves to be savoured in the way the tracks have been programmed. Keith and Cecilia make a great sonic team - coming on like a lo-fi Thurston and Kim, produced by early Four Tet. Not overlooking the contribution of the legendary Brian Kelly of So Cow who brings the
Midas touch to everything he's involved with. 'Field Recordings' is an album that celebrates the richness of Loner Deluxe's record collection, but also an album that expresses its admiration for production, for sound, for the possibilities of the studio".
Loner Deluxe - Field Recordings
RR48
1. Track 1 Side 1
2. Off the Grid
3. Tin Foil Hat
4. Mist Call
5. Meet on the Wedge
6. Cancel the Fear
7. Comet Light
8. Space Junk
9. Radiation Record
10. Ex Directory
11. Broken Compass
12. Gone Fission
13. Pink Snow & Acid Rain
14. Viral Hit
For the record, Loner Deluxe was:
Keith Wallace - audio capture, bass, beat generation, belton s49 organ, casio sa46, drum machines, electrickery, fuzz bass, lyrics (1, 6, 10, 14) microkorg, minimoog, mixing, production, stylophone gen x-1, tambourine, thundermaker, toy theremin, vocals (1, 6, 14), wine glasses, yamaha pss170
with
Dave Colohan - hohner organetta (3)
Cecilia Danell - banjo (8), compressed air can (10), electric guitar (11, 14), lyrics (3, 6, 8, 14),
vocals (1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 13, 14)
Brian Kelly - acoustic guitar (1, 5, 9, 10, 12) electric guitar (1, 2, 4, 9) mellotron (12)
Recorded in various homes
Mastered by Aaron Hurley
Artwork and sleeve design by Cecilia Danell and Keith Wallace
Dedicated to the memory of Peter Wallace (1944-2020)
Reviews
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“The new Loner Deluxe record is a flowing, melodic journey brimming with energy and musical ambition. Field Recordings is Keith Wallace’s most complete project to date - though it is difficult to pin the album to one specific theme, there is a definite style and tone that rings strong throughout.” - Galway City Tribune/Connacht Tribune
"Field Recordings - Loner Deluxe's sonic trip through these troubled times.
There is, perhaps, a certain West of Ireland echo - or echoes, if you will - in the sleeve of Field Recordings, the new Loner Deluxe album, to that of the sleeve for Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother. Both feature a farm animal, alone in a field, staring back at the viewer, and the covers of both hint at, and deliberately distract from, the contents within.
The bliss and majesty of Atom Heart Mother's bucolic, pastoral, folk-rock and prog served to mask its dark themes - mental breakdown, anxiety, failed romances, the failure to understand and connect with others, and nostalgia for days which can never return.
Similarly, Field Recordings, released on Friday March 5, via independent Galway label Rusted Rail, draws on a wide palette of sounds, perhaps the Loner's widest yet - lo-fi bedroom pop, garage rock, electronica, hip-hop, and more left field influences such as the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
What unites these seemingly incompatible genres is the intimate feel of the music, a happy balancing of rhythm and melody, and a sense of humour. Yet underneath, lie dark themes of technophobia, paranoia, conspiracy, nuclear fallout, vandalism, gentrification, environmental collapse, and of course the Covid-19 pandemic ('Viral Hit' ).
Yet hope comes in the form of 'Meet On The Wedge', a nod to the 1968 Fairport Convention number, 'Meet On The Ledge'. The Loner's tune celebrates summer days meeting friends by the canal, near the bridge which links Upper and Lower Dominick Street - something we cannot do right now, but which we can look forward to doing post-pandemic.
The music was created, assembled, and performed by Loner Deluxe (Keith Wallace), Cecilia Danell (A Lilac Decline) and Brian Kelly (So Cow), and Dave Colohan, and mastered by Aaron Hurley. It is the follow-up to the Loner's 2017 cassette release, Songs I Taped Off the Radio." - The Galway Advertiser
"Loner Deluxe is the alter-ego and musical project of Keith Wallace, whom, since 2006, has run the Rusted Rail record label, which is based in Galway, Ireland. Field Recordings is his first album since 2017’s Songs I Taped Off The Radio. I’ll kind of start the review where I might often end – and say that from the outset, this is a diverse and eclectic set of songs. I wouldn’t particularly describe the album as ‘cohesive’ – and that actually plays very much to its strengths, because each song sounds like it carries us off at a tangent – and sometimes in a completely different direction – to the previous song.
There’s a lo-fi feel to the recordings throughout – and a fuzzy, slightly stoned feel. ‘Meet On The Wedge’, for instance, has all the hallmarks of a tune written while sitting in the garden just after sunset, slightly jaded from the effects of an unknown substance.
‘Cancel The Fear’ unexpectedly manages to fuse Eels with John Carpenter. Elsewhere, there are bleeps, synth noises, and sounds which wouldn’t be out of place on a Dr. Who outtakes album. It probably won’t surprise you that there are themes of paranoia, cognitive dissonance and environmental decline herein.
‘Ex-Directory’ is what T-Rex might sound like if Mark Bolan‘s girlfriend whispered the vocals and Tangerine Dream were invited along to the party. It’s arguably the most ‘pop’ song here.
There’s definitely a feel-good retro theme going on here too. ‘Broken Compass’ could be the sound of an archived Kraftwerk session where Florian Schneider decided to bring along an electric guitar with a fuzz effect pedal which he’s borrowed from Sonic Youth. Fans of seventies early electronica and lo-fi will be in their element.
‘Viral Hit’ rounds things off – and by my reckoning, it’s the standout track. It was apparently written during the pandemic, which just goes to show that some good things do actually come out of a pandemic.
In summary, there are countless ideas across this album – and that’s really the way this album should be approached when listening to it. It’s almost like a document – or a diarised soundtrack – of the randomised thoughts of Wallace, where none of the chapters of the book bear any relation to the next. Just because we’re hearing about a star exploding in a far away universe in the current song doesn’t mean we won’t hear about a vandalised phone box in the next one." - SIC Magazine
"In over a decade of activity, Loner Deluxe has gradually transformed itself from a solitary home experimentation project by Keith Wallace - also responsible for the Rusted Rail label - into a shared patchwork of sounds and harmonic fragments, in which a plurality of acoustic cues coexist in analog.
Decisive, particularly in the last part of the Irish artist's production, was the intensification of the partnership with Cecilia Danell (A Lilac Decline), who has now become an integral part of the band, together with Brian Kelly (So Cow),and whose contribution to the new “Field Recordings” is now almost equal to that of Wallace. In spite of the title, which claims its spontaneous and unadorned genesis, it is in fact an album of "songs", albeit bewildered and immersed in a whirlwind of pulsations, loops and assorted sound debris, which do not deny the original "weird" nature of the project, however amplifying the components of pop retro-futurism in medium fidelity.
The work collects fourteen agile miniatures (all under four minutes in duration) that rotate like a kaleidoscope in which sharp-edged sound segmentations, analogue textures and oblique acoustic strings follow one another with a pressing rhythm, completed from time to time by vocal parts with a surprising pop vein. The original experimental nature has by no means disappeared in the blender of sounds and styles proposed by the trio, but rather remains an integral part of the surreal "home folk of the third millennium" condensed in "Field Recordings" as a lucid, acrobatic testimony of a dystopian present. (Album of the Week)
- Music Won't Save You (internet translation from the original Italian)
"Loner Deluxe is the project of Irishman Keith Wallace with the help of Cecilia Danelll (A Lilac Decline) and Brian Kelly (So Cow). ‘Field Recordings’ takes in a plethora of sounds from pop to garage rock to hip-hop, all recorded with a fuzzy, hazy lo-fi aesthetic. It has even been described as lo-fi Sonic Youth produced by Kieran Hebden - that should pique your interest." - Norman Records
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