On Tuesday, my brother Mike and I released a new album called “Soft Erasure.” This is our 4th full-length studio album as Gray Acres, a collaborative project we started back in 2018. You can download the album below or stream it wherever you please:
It’s also available as a beautiful, bespoke CD edition courtesy of our friends at Fluid Audio. The CD comes enclosed in a hardcover book case packaged with all kinds of vintage maps and ephemera. I’ve been working with Dan and Jess on various projects for over 10 years now, and it never fails to impress me just how mesmerizing these packages are. There are only 50 copies total, and each one is prepared individually by hand.
Please note that while I do have 20 of these copies arriving soon, if you’re outside the US, you may find it easier, faster, and more affordable to purchase one directly from the label. You can do that at this link instead.
I’m really proud of how this project came together. It was a bit of a slow burn, with the first recordings and samples dating back to 2020 when we were recording the album prior (2021’s “Dreams and Phantoms”). Taking that blueprint - guitar-centric drones; deep synthesized pads; orchestral flourishes - and slowing it down a bit, we found ourselves time and again gently erasing the clarity and definition of the source sounds into more “vaporous” versions. Having most of the elements pre-recorded and available for use meant that we didn’t need to build from the ground up, and we could instead focus on smudging, smearing, stretching, and shaping those sounds into something entirely different and relevant for our current moment and headspace. That so much time had passed between initial recording and final product assembly made this quite a fun experiment. In many cases, I don’t remember how some of these sounds even came to be or what I was using. As much as I would like to do a deeper track-by-track breakdown of what went into this, it may not even be possible!
I’d like to thank those who played a key part in this album: to Dan and Jess for the artwork, design, and CD package, and to Alex at for the wonderfully sensitive mastering job. Thanks also to family and friends who encourage Mike and I to chase these creative pursuits to begin with - it is rewarding beyond belief.
We’d like to set up a few performances of this material in the coming months, if possible. More on that if/when it develops. If you happen to operate (or can recommend) a space that may be receptive to this kind of a show, please feel free to reach out any time.
Thanks again for your generous support of this album and support for Sound Methods. My output here has been slow, and will probably continue to be more reduced than I would like these next few months…but I am always working, recording, and generating ideas. Some just need some more time and space to develop and I will continue to share them however and whenever possible.
All the best,
AT
thank you and congrats again andrew! beautiful release it was a pleasure to master :)
Wow Andrew, this is so beautiful!