Holding Pattern by Slow Clarity

There’s a tireless psychedelia to any decent friendship–the first proud, igneous layers that crystallize in themselves the sparks of kindredness and easy trust, pressed into place by the myriad swirling and contrasting miracles that accumulate over time, like laughter, the friction of the honest, the comfortable quietness, the exuberant celebration of the same old rock, the confounding and the boundless understanding.

Planting a modern tongue in the fattened cheek of tradition, Steve and Matt are found here to be effortlessly conversational. Reasoning and wandering are both given equal range and are infused with equal enthusiasm across the course of these ten pieces–vignettes unfurl like fits of sunlight amidst foliage in a lazy turn of breeze, and beautifully lopsided bells of thought burst into brilliant pealing. Woozy half-thoughts bubble forth from the agreeable mud of a patch you might have trodden before, but never in the shoes you’re wearing now. The many forks of the path may lead you to solemn contemplation, teary-eyed mirth, cynical certainty, bright happiness, near-unbearable sorrow, or–mercifully–nowhere in particular, a peaceful place to rest for a little while.

Everything begins to feel deliciously cyclical, yet endlessly various.

You watch the moments fold into hours, days, weeks, years, decades, and then you suddenly find yourself steely-eyed, imagining the impossibly eternal plane. It is frighteningly unknowable and indefinable, but you remind yourself that you retain the power to laughingly and joyfully embrace it, because you are not alone, and every approach is worthy of your time.

-Jen Powers, October 2022

Holding Pattern was recorded at our homes in Minneapolis and St. Paul on stereo reel-to-reel, phones, and other media between 2015 and 2022.

Slow Clarity is the acid-tinged dual guitar project of Steve Palmer and Matt Beachey, who draw from the various finger-picking traditions associated their instruments, along with minimalism, occasional psychedelic choogle, and deep-zone drone.

Beachey and Palmer released a tape in 2016 on Cabin Floor Esoterica entitled “Slow Clarity”, and later adopted the name as a moniker for the duo.