"what comes tomorrow, keeps me alive today..." photo by leif huron
There are songs that feel like, well, songs and there are songs that feel like vehicles of emotional transport, veils of translucent memories, sonic art pieces in a museum, impressions that stay in your head days after being heard or seen. "Taiko" (the song and Official Video) by singer-songwriter, mixed media artist Catch Prichard is one such art form. I can tell you candidly that I didn't care for it the first time around. Sometimes that is the nature of something that is new to me, especially something so original. After all, something different and new is not as easy to swallow as fast food or easily identifiable pop music. The thing is, even though it didn't grab me immediately I still knew that it was special and that I probably just wasn't in the right head space.
Coming back a day later with closed cup headphones on, the off center tensions, rhythmic mutations like machinery, droning mellotron-esque swells like an alien orchestra, vocal washes, harmonies stacked and canned like rusty memories of the future, dark sonic clouds pushed my mind into an uncomfortable melancholia. This soundscape that Catch Prichard conjures up is ultimately as much a sonic Rorschach test as it is a hazy spiral down his mind's eye with tears and all.
Press notes reveal the following:
[“Taiko” is a brutally personal confession of doubts, inhibitions, desires, and hopes. Recorded and produced at Sawyer’s home in Oakland, CA, “Taiko” embodies a natural synthesis of simple yet powerful arrangements of processed piano, guitar, and tape manipulation. A delicate symbiosis between ambient soundscapes and songwriting is sustained without compromising harmony, melody, or form. This first single of a new collection of self-recorded songs is a potent dirge yearning for tomorrow while treading unease about its offering. Ghostly vocal harmonies cry into the deep end of a rhythmic drone. Sawyer’s drive for musical experimentation continues to send listeners to scenes familiar yet remote, like the fascinating and strange moment within deja vu or fractals within a dream.]
I love the processing of organic sounds and shifting those sounds into other things. It is like a cinematographer bending light and making what is seen by the camera into something else. It is an inspiring proposition, an unreal imagining. Enjoy the song through the lens of Leif Huron who created the Official Video.
"Taiko" is the first single from Catch Prichard's 2nd album coming out this fall through Anxiety Blanket Record.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://soundcloud.com/catchprichard
https://open.spotify.com/artist/4fGnksIEapOHDbvWOYPCW5
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmNutfvwJVkRKa6FAZiDj7g
https://catchprichard.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/catchprichard/
https://www.catchprichard.com/
Originally from a small town in the northern Midwest, Sawyer Gebauer moved to Europe at age 19 where he founded the Swedish art-folk project Brittsommar. After tours of Europe and the U.S. and the release of three albums, he returned stateside to Oakland, California in 2016 where he began a new project, Catch Prichard. Always on the hunt to create in unorthodox environments such as an abandoned auto factory in Berlin, an empty synagogue on the rim of a frozen Wisconsin lake, or an East Texas ghost town, Sawyer released 6 albums in a 9-year span, finding support from Pitchfork, NPR, Noisey, Consequence of Sound, American Songwriter Magazine, Uproxx, No Depression, Ladygunn, and more.
In March 2020, Catch Prichard recorded I Still Miss Theresa Benoit while Gebauer was unknowingly under the influence of COVID-19 and its weight was heard throughout the album as he struggled to catch his breath between takes. Pitchfork claimed this haunting record as “possibly the first album to be sung by someone suffering the effects of COVID-19."
In 2023, Catch Prichard will be releasing a new collection of solo home recordings that once again reaches for the firmament of mercurial musical experimentation. Implementing processed acoustic instruments, granular synthesis, tape manipulation, and orchestral sampling, Sawyer sustains a delicate symbiosis between ambient soundscapes and songwriting traditions without compromising harmony, melody, or form. Recorded and produced by Sawyer in his Oakland home, these Catch Prichard tracks are a brutally honest confession of doubt, inhibition, desire, and hope. Ultimately, these songs echo the vulnerabilities of the self and inspire the strength to grow larger than them.
Catch Prichard, alt pop, avant rock, psychedelic, freak folk, singer songwriter, experimental pop, post punk, electronica, noir wave, noir, Oakland California, dream soundscapes, "Taiko",
Originally from a small town in the northern Midwest, Sawyer Gebauer moved to Europe at age 19 where he founded the Swedish art-folk project Brittsommar. After tours of Europe and the U.S. and the release of three albums, he returned stateside to Oakland, California in 2016 where he began a new project, Catch Prichard. Always on the hunt to create in unorthodox environments such as an abandoned auto factory in Berlin, an empty synagogue on the rim of a frozen Wisconsin lake, or an East Texas ghost town, Sawyer released 6 albums in a 9-year span, finding support from Pitchfork, NPR, Noisey, Consequence of Sound, American Songwriter Magazine, Uproxx, No Depression, Ladygunn, and more.
In March 2020, Catch Prichard recorded I Still Miss Theresa Benoit while Gebauer was unknowingly under the influence of COVID-19 and its weight was heard throughout the album as he struggled to catch his breath between takes. Pitchfork claimed this haunting record as “possibly the first album to be sung by someone suffering the effects of COVID-19."
In 2023, Catch Prichard will be releasing a new collection of solo home recordings that once again reaches for the firmament of mercurial musical experimentation. Implementing processed acoustic instruments, granular synthesis, tape manipulation, and orchestral sampling, Sawyer sustains a delicate symbiosis between ambient soundscapes and songwriting traditions without compromising harmony, melody, or form. Recorded and produced by Sawyer in his Oakland home, these Catch Prichard tracks are a brutally honest confession of doubt, inhibition, desire, and hope. Ultimately, these songs echo the vulnerabilities of the self and inspire the strength to grow larger than them.
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