The stable wasn’t meant to last. It was a temporary resting place for a herd that didn’t truly exist—one they’d see racing across the prairie only when the sun blinded just right.
Over the last six months Matthew Sage has shared with us Lux‘s many formations and collapses—additions, subtractions, re–framings, etc—from demos to what finally settles below. Normally both purists when it comes to hearing unfinished work, both Nathaniel and I wouldn’t have necessarily signed up to be inside Matt’s process; this just happened out of friendship and trust, and we’re quite thankful it did. Much of the exchange took place while we were arriving at Dreams and the overall next shape of S&S, and as a result, Lux Collapsing became the soundtrack to our own process, and is now uniquely embedded in our infrastructure. Personally, this is the closest we’ve ever been to a single recording.
There’s something almost perpetually undone about Lux Collapsing—as if destined never to fully crystallize, but rather circulate like dust in a room, exposed to motion, coating the surfaces of the subconscious. A sense of curious unease is present throughout; it drags us off the edge of “Prairie Belle”, stalks the fable of “Sweeping Glances”, and climbs the minor strings of delicate closer “Two Exteriors: Daylight”. In Matt’s words, the album is a “40 minute, eight track meditation on light in the west, decay and forgetting…a post-classical ambient piece, focused on the profound nature of light and timelessness.” At its core Lux borrows from old vinyl cuts, which have been stretched and subdued to distant memories. Suspended above them, and intertwined, cello, flute, and guitar work from Sage and a cast of Fort Collins friends complete the movements. It’s a massive if modest collection—one might say just right, depending on the time and space of any given day in flux.
Stream the release in its entirety for the first time here today, and be sure to support Patient Sounds’ Kickstarter so this LP can get pressed (and if CMJ bound, it swirls live October 17th).