Higher Lows by Higher Lows

Higher Lows is a new beginning for San Francisco songwriter, playwright and audio-visual artist Jon Bernson. Inspired by Leonard Cohen’s classic Casio album, Various Positions, Higher Lows taps the auto-generated rhythms and genres that lie buried in the memory banks of thrift store keyboards. Using these obsolete instruments started out as a quarantine escape, but turned into an unlikely platform for Bernson’s subtle epiphanies and witty reflections on music, touring, love and homelessness. Joined by longtime collaborator Jason Kick, the duo contrasts its uptempo arrangements with lyrics that are introspective, poetic and autobiographical. The resulting album is an optimistic one that strives to look beyond the pandemic and pick up the lost pieces of life.

Bernson’s music has reached far and wide over the last two decades, not only with Exray’s, Window Twins, Black Fiction and Ray’s Vast Basement, but through his scoring for film, theater and art installations. His songs and music videos have been praised and premiered by Pitchfork, Bandcamp, Rolling Stone, Spin, Brooklyn Vegan, Aquarium Drunkard, Paste, Juxtapoz, Tiny Mix Tapes and others. Higher Lows is Howells Transmitter’s 25th release and was produced in collaboration with The Space Program in San Francisco, where Bernson was an artist-in-residence in 2020. The residency offered Higher Lows a rare opportunity to track in TSP’s state-of-the-art recording studio and then return one year later to screen print the covers of their limited edition, 180 gram vinyl debut.

Bernson’s music and sound design for film have been featured at Sundance, SXSW, The New Yorker and in David Fincher’s Academy-award winning film, The Social Network. His audio-visual installations have been exhibited at the de Young Museum, Sonos Studio, Minnesota Street Project, the Nevada Museum of Art, Catharine Clark Gallery, Miami Project and beyond. Bernson is the author of seven plays, including When Lighting The Voids, his 2019 audio drama which premiered on 600 NPR stations nationwide in partnership with StoryWorks Theater and Reveal. Jason Kick is a prolific Oakland songwriter and music producer, a founding member of Bay Area band Maus Haus and the solo artist J. Chrysanthemum.

RIYL: Leonard Cohen, William Onyeabor, David Berman, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Mort Garson, Hailu Mergia, Arthur Russell, Giorgio Moroder, Todd Terje

Long live the Casio!

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