Drowse

Drowse

Wane Into It

Flenser

In 2019, Drowse’s Kyle Bates set out to produce a self-recorded new album. Marked by moving across state lines, long-distance relationships, and deaths in the family, the following years proved to be metamorphic. Now, three years later, he’s emerged with Wane Into It, continuing a distinctly Pacific Northwestern tradition of self-recording indie experimentalists (Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You). One of the most impactful moments came during the looming passing of a family member. With death expected, the choice was made to conduct a bizarre “living-wake” gathering—with the soon-to-be-deceased in attendance. Shortly after, Bates found himself disturbed, preoccupied with the abstraction of memory. The experience led him to reassess the tool one uses to curate our selective memories: the internet. The internet, which creeped into even more aspects of life during the pandemic, serves as our self-made digital link to the past. Its uncaring presence layered over humbling thoughts of death and his own childhood memories of the Oregon Coast as he worked on Wane Into It; life’s hyperreal texture sank into the recordings as he felt his body age and wane. Big sounds were captured in bedrooms, hallways, practice spaces, forests, and on highways throughout West Coast—vibraphones chime over black metal guitars, a mellotron drones under degraded samples, violins splinter against granular field recordings. In the process of documenting these aural moments Bates completed an MFA at Mills College, coloring the album with shades of avant-electronic and minimalist composition (Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Maryanne Amacher, Sarah Davachi...

Drowse

Light Mirror

Flenser

In April of 2018, Drowse’s Kyle Bates left his home in Portland, OR, for an artist residency in barren northern Iceland. Much of Bates’ time there was spent in self-imposed isolation, giving him ample space to ponder the nature of solitude, and what it means to be “closed” or “open” to the world. Upon returning home, Bates worked obsessively. Maya Stoner, his longtime creative partner, sometimes came to sing, but recordings were mostly done alone. The dichotomy of his Icelandic musings materialized in a very real way as he neglected his personal relationships in favor of his art. While he was confronting his life-long fear of intimacy, and reconciling himself to a diagnosis of Bipolar 1, Bates found that the means he employed to conquer these obstacles—self reflection through art—carried with them an equal measure of misery. Light Mirror, Drowse’s second album for The Flenser, is a subtle exploration of these contradictory attitudes and their consequences that can be heard as an artifact of sonic self-sabotage. Light Mirror falls within a lineage of overcast Pacific Northwest albums (think Grouper’s Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill), but finds Drowse pushing past its slowcore roots. The album’s prismatic sound reflects experimental electronic, noise pop, black metal, krautrock, and more through Kyle’s distinct song-worlds. The lyrics are ruminations on the idea of multiple-selves, identity, paranoia, fear of the body, alcohol abuse, social media, the power of memory, the truths that are revealed when one is alone, and the significance of human contact....

Drowse

Cold Air

Flenser

***Back in print on vinyl!!!  After a severe mental breakdown, Kyle Bates of Portland, Oregon’s Drowse was prescribed a plethora of antipsychotic drugs. Several unmedicated years later, anxiety resurfaced and he turned to Klonopin and alcohol—it was during this time that he wrote and recorded this second full-length album, Cold Air, marked by fanatical self-exploration and expansive detuned instrumentation.  This album is a peek inside the mind of Bates, the band’s only full time member, painstakingly recorded over nine months in his home. The house itself appears several times on the album in the form of field recordings and background occurrences. Although Bates is a secular person, his lyrics are influenced by the religious writings of Anne Carson and Karl Ove Knausgaard and their ruminations on death. This is an album that frames big picture ideas within intimate, often shame-ridden experiences: a nose broken while blackout drunk, a seizure followed by feverish hallucinations, a father’s stroke, the death of a close friend. It is the sound of the uncertainty beneath our lives surfacing.  “...will make you feel like someone is holding your head under water in the Pacific Ocean.” – Noisey