Gravity Season by Leon Patriz
cassettes available here:
https://uraudiovisual.bandcamp.com/album/ur-042-gravity-season
"Vancouver based Leon Patriz is the solo recording moniker of Enzio Verster. He is known for his songwriting and obscurantist stage presence in the experimental indie rock project Half Chinese (2006-2014). His new album “Gravity Season” is a 13 song cycle-loop that mixes pop songwriting with ambient drone and guitar/synth textures. This is his 2nd release with the Toronto based record label UR Audio-Visual.
The catalyst for the album was to record a soundtrack for an imaginary crime thriller, but during the writing process it took a new shape – into a more intuitive and disheveled form – much like one's own home garden when left unattended.
The album oscillates between instrumental reflections of seasonal and astronomical changes on the one hand, and on the other, songwriting that ruminates on uncertainty in the face of optimism. Both of these elements infuse into each other and create an atmosphere reminiscent of Fripp and Eno's Evening Star, yet filtered through a mid-fi aesthetic that embraces a 90s slacker pop ethos that venerates rather than disparages the pop of the 70s.
The essence of the album revolves around the interplay of shoe-gazing and star-gazing. The heart of this interplay seems haunted by Friedrich Nietzche's idea of the eternal recurrence. The disposition towards the recurrence seems complex and ambiguous. At the level of sonic sensation, there is a luminosity that pierces the gray clouds of existential let-downs through an embrace of the homely as a spiritual determination. Whether it is the emotional honest pop single “carry on” or the exploratory synth musings like “planetary perturbations”, the album can be appreciated best as a work of ambient method acting. .
Gravity Season was recorded and mixed at home after moving back to the neighborhood where he grew up, in east Vancouver. The recording was done sporadically over the last year, mostly while his kid was sleeping."
- Harrison Pratt
Tracklist
| 1. | David Bowie in Hollywood | 2:12 |
| 2. | Summer Solstice | 1:31 |
| 3. | Stellar Day | 1:38 |
| 4. | Eddy Currents | 1:23 |
| 5. | Gravity | 1:10 |
| 6. | Autumnal Equinox | 2:01 |
| 7. | Carry On | 2:43 |
| 8. | Island Hopping | 1:28 |
| 9. | Winter Solstice | 2:09 |
| 10. | Planetary Perturbations | 3:34 |
| 11. | Conic Sections | 1:30 |
| 12. | Seasons | 2:13 |
| 13. | Vernal Equinox | 1:48 |
Credits
Mastered by D.T. at Analogue Sound
Lyrics for "Gravity" by B.C.
Artwork by B.C.
Album bio by Harrison Pratt
All songs written, performed, and mixed by E.V.
