from Snowed Under, released January 21, 2016
Reviews
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"There’s probably some poem about Winter lurking around in there, but seeing as it’s in the mid-60s here today, it’d be disingenuous to say “I feel you.” Loner Deluxe felt the chill, and wisely wrapped a concept about Winter around himself like a heating blanket. Transforming experience into concept creates distance from said experience. In song, it passes the buck to the listener, the burden or the joy. Innocently, some heavy Cold War miscommunications travel between the hands of the creator and the ears of the listener. But what’s important to the creator is that they are “off the hook,” no longer in cuffs with the thing. And what’s important to the listener is that the steady seeping saturation of external stimuli continues to coat the ears. And, if that listener happens to be saying “hello” from Sunny California or Key Largo, then a chilly concept like Snowed Under and its close-to-the-radiator blanket-of-snow “Holding Pattern” serves as the Weather Channel does in those locales, by humoring a detached mild curiosity and inducing a sigh of relief that sounds something like “boy oh boy, am I glad I’m not there.” One can still sympathize though, supposedly. As the voice on the answering machine in “Holding Pattern” concludes, “Well, anyway, have a nice night. Good night.”" - Tiny Mix Tapes

"From the bright summer image of the cover (digital) of "The Coast Is Clear" in the winter of "Snowed Under", he has spent just two seasons. There are also two sides of the multifaceted personality of Keith Wallace contained in two short EP with which revitalized its project Loner Deluxe.

The latest winter EP consists of three short pieces, a dozen minutes in which the Irish artist offers continuity to the signals of evolution of its predecessor project first made manifest in the summer, starting with the introduction of the element on vocal sound polymer products by its lopsided approach to folk home. Traces they perceive in the opening track, "Winters Last Fire", whose exotic melody, again sung by Cecilia Danell, is situated on a combination of picking vaguely mystical ritual and hallucinated pulses analog keyboards.

In the remaining two songs, the voices returned instead to be mere spoken word, that accompany the samples overtones of "Holding Pattern" and loops more restless and segmented "We Saw No Stars", which complete the snapshot released by Wallace, in download by donation, of his creations winter, consistent with the hushed atmosphere of the season but who do not give a singularity of approach (dis) enchanted and visionary." - Music Won't Save You (Internet translation from Italian)

"This digital cassette single is Loner Deluxe's follow up to its previous release The Coast is Clear. The cover image shows the same lake, but the warm summer waters have turned to ice now. Yes, a winter release. With the overall sound of this new release, Loner Deluxe captures a winter feeling.

On the first track Winter Last Fire, the sound slowly lingers on. Pure acoustic guitars, sober electronics, a strong drum beat and the beautiful female voice evoke a winter campfire atmosphere. Acoustic psychedelics, unearthly electronics. Loner Deluxe calls it 'UFOlk' and that sounds like the appropriate label.

Holding Pattern is an instrumental that exactly does what the title suggest: the track concentrates on one musical pattern. Although that's not entirely correct. Within the playing time (2 min.) there are some musical developments. The telephone sample near the end of the track has no added value. When the song seems to evolve a bit, it fades... A missed opportunity.

Like Winter Last Fire, the closing track We Saw No Stars is constructed with minimal electronics and guitars, paired to a male voice. The song is partly spoken and partly sung. The lovely choir surely is the icing on the cake. Absolute top shelf neo-folk.

Loner Deluxe brings a remarkable mixture of electronics and (neo) folk. The release Snowed Under is a good appetizer. But why be so economical with three tracks only, two valuable songs and one that can be described as a filler? There's much more potential here, that's for sure. Not totally happy with Holding Pattern, but both Winter Last Fire and We Saw No Stars give the release a well-earned 60/100." - Peek-A-Boo Magazine


"This winter, eh? Dark mornings, dark nights, the cold and the endless, endless bloody rain. It’s enough to make a man depressed. What one needs, really, to get one through these bleak months, is the comfort of some warm, fuzzy folk-tronica, as reassuring as a thick blanket and a hot cup of cocoa.

Hooray, then, for Galway’s Keith Wallace – aka Loner Deluxe – who delivers just that in the form of ‘Snowed Under’, a three-song EP or – as it’s advertised – a ‘digital cassingle’ (whatever the frig that is). Brief it may be at just under 12 minutes long, but the three atmospheric tracks on ‘Snowed Under’ will have you reaching for the repeat button throughout the long, dark evenings.

Opener ‘Winter’s Last Fire’ combines a languid, slo-mo breakbeat and a spoken word sample about a UFO sighting with a delicate acoustic guitar figure and the distinctive vocals of Rusted Rail stalwart Cecelia Danell, to great effect. A chiming, simple keyboard part makes its presence felt from the midpoint of the song onwards and is quite delightful – and is that some understated scratching we hear? Excellent. There isn’t nearly enough scratching on records these days.

‘Holding Pattern’ is an altogether more sombre affair, the very essence of a winter chill captured via a descending acoustic riff allied to a shivery beat and a disembodied female voice apologising for her mistakes before signing off with a jarringly cheery “Anyway, have a nice night…goodnight”. It’s enough to give you goosebumps.

Last song ‘We Saw No Stars’ returns to the UFO theme via another spoken word sample, accompanied this time by a quite lovely, reverb-laden electric guitar part, as welcome and comforting as a great big hug.

And, as quickly as it arrived, that’s the EP (sorry, ‘cassingle’) done. If it all veers dangerously close to ‘trip-hop’ territory – well, is that really such a bad thing? Draw the curtains, light the fire, press play again and bask in Loner Deluxe’s warm glow. This winter could go on for a while yet." - Hotel Amnesia

REVIEWS
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Loner Deluxe - lunar folk and sci-fi sounds

"There is abundant evidence that we are being contacted. Civilisations have been visiting us for a very long time. Their appearance is bizarre from any materialist Western point of view..."

A deadly serious voice, one not accustomed to being contradicted, informs of these alien visits as part of 'Moon Dunes', the opening track of Long Shore Drift, the new EP - or 'digital cassingle' - by Loner Deluxe via the independent Galway label, Rusted Rail.

'Moon Dunes' is a continuation of Loner Deluxe's obsession with what he calls "UFOlk", and indeed a listener may be tempted to ask, 'Well, who's been watching Stranger Things recently, then?" (the artist is also a considerable John Carpenter fan, another influence at work here ) The track is built around a very simple chord progression, but the utter seriousness of that 'we have been visited' believer to the throbbing bass, and the woozy, sinewy synth sound, combine to produce a very effective soundtrack for a TV series about aliens yet to be scripted.

The majority of instruments on Long Shore Drift are played by Loner Deluxe (aka Keith Wallace ), but the title track is the most collaborative, and one of Loner's finest compositions to date. A looped, bouncing banjo figure from Dave Colohan, and a gentle, yet pulsing electronic beat, underpins the track, contrasting beautifully with the atonal sounds that gurgle behind the gently musing vocals of Aaron Coyne (lyricist for this track ). The song has a late nineties, early 2000s feel, and recalls a certain kind of song that would have been heard on No Disco.

A second instrumental 'Heatwaves' is a touch of electro-folk trance, inspired by summer travels in Ireland; while closing track 'NiteKlubGhosts' ("music for a derelict dancefloor in a haunted nightclub," says Keith ), reprises some of these themes and ideas of the opening track, neatly wrapping up and tying together the overall ideas of the EP. - Kernan Andrews, The Galway Advertiser


"Rather loosely stumbled across this via a posting on he rusted nail records Facebook page, described as ‘UFOlk’ – a term which I’m sure in time will come to lessen the burden of hauntology'Ss usage for anything that sounds slightly odd or ill fitting to any recognised generic box placing, this be the ominous sound of Loner Deluxe and ‘Moon Dunes’. A paranoiac cold war call sign etched in a chilling conspiratorial macabre all deadheaded by a sparsely tense and futile minimalist sonic void and possessed of a flatlining weary vintage to which admirers of all things orbiting the Ghost Box and Polytechnic Youth sound spectrum will swoon to. Cold, oblique and to these ears veering ever so disquietingly into the early transmissions of both Add N to X and Mount Vernon Arts Lab, essential listening then".

- marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2016/09/26/loner-deluxe/

"Continues to short but frequent stops in the form of digital EP, the oblique artistic career of Keith Wallace, label Rusted Rail curator and head of the personal project Loner Deluxe . Second annual output, "Long Shore Drift" condenses into little more than a dozen minutes the large Irish artist's expressive spectrum, which is continuing its practice of layering chaotic but organized pulse of guitars and keyboards in low fidelity, functional in create irregular and dystopian soundscapes.

The proof is in particular the initial "Moon Dunes", which, however, soon becomes the canvas on which Wallace again engages a variety of elements, thanks to which it brings its de-structuring sound in an organic form, capable of supporting even fragments songs. Are those marked by nocturnal pulse, marked in "Heatwaves" (completed by the voice of Cecilia Danell) and decidedly nuanced in the title track, whose oblique harmonies describe rural nostalgic glimpses comparable to that of Hood , also thanks to the acoustic contribution of David Colohan .
The samples and synthetic lines "then NiteKlubGhoconcludono the short course of Ep, still more than enough to drive for hand through soundscapes unusual, once again elusive to any unequivocal definition." - Music Wont Save You (internet translation from Italian)
musicwontsaveyou.com/2016/10/01/loner-deluxe-long-shore-drift/