Cashion, William

***FUTURE ISLANDS bassist WILLIAM CASHION collects postcards. Years in one of the country’s hardest-touring bands often find him rushing from destination to destination without time to take a deep breath, let alone be present in each locale’s sights and sounds. But bringing home postcards helps coalesce ephemeral moments into souvenirs he can return to and access again. In crafting his first solo record, Cashion experimented in the studio, driven by a potentially infinite riddle: “what is the sound of a song that has no beginning and no end?” Exploring music’s unique ability to distort our sense of the passage of time—or even take us outside it—Cashion welcomed elements of repetition and chance into his process. The sessions were also highly informed by meditation, a new regular practice Cashion introduced to his daily routine during this period. The resulting album builds upon the most intriguing results of months of exploratory writing sessions. Acclaimed UK designer CHRIS BIGG helped visualize the world of Postcard Music, and Cashion’s wife, visual artist ELENA JOHNSTON contributed a painting to the album's inner sleeve. Cashion and Johnston have previously worked together on a series of collaborative paintings and brightly colored, curved neon light sculptures. During downtime between projects, he retreats to the beaches of North Carolina near where Future Islands formed. The eleven songs here were recorded in sessions in the Outer Banks, the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and Cashion’s current hometown Baltimore.