"Tacoma Park, combines their abstract impulses in a style you might call homespun monumental, with heavily processed guitars and richly textured synths combining into a Southeastern American take on a certain German tradition of droning, pulsating, landscape-traveling electronic music. Live, the duo augments the music with videos of the images—forests and fields, highways and runways—that it so readily suggests"
- Brian Howe (IndyWeek)
- Brian Howe (IndyWeek)
Press / Bookings / Anything At All
Back in 2016, Ben Felton, a solo guitarist who’s also known for his work with Lightbulbs in the Trees and Shark Quest, caught John Harrison (Jphono1) playing a solo set of vocal-lead songs that were tied together by a looper pedal and energetic improvisation. Harrison’s use of guitar loops was something that Felton could relate to in his own music, and that ignited the spark of inspiration. Felton invited Harrison to play a show with him and future Tacoma Park-collaborator, Nathan Golub, on the night after the oncoming presidential election. Under the grim atmosphere of that fateful night, the healing and transportive powers of music reigned supreme, and their individual sets made that spark of Felton’s inspiration burn even brighter. After the gig, Felton and Harrison talked shop and struck up a conversation about jamming as a duo. Once the pair combined forces, the sound they forged together was a unique and adventurous blend of hypnotic electronics and guitar soli music. A Piedmont-based variation of kosmiche musik was born.
To develop their songs, the duo creates a versatile framework of minimalist drones and loose chord progressions to later improvise over with layers of overdubbed cosmic synths and guitars. With their second album being a pandemic record, they learned to build up and shape their songs by hand from individual pieces. They often cut up improvised jams, splice together the best and most interesting parts, process and manipulate those recordings, and then layer in new instrumental tracks. The resulting mix is a hallucinatory soundscape that transports the listener far away to hazy yet colorful distant planes.
After three stellar albums and several singles later, Tacoma Park is still finding new paths to follow within the spectrum of their distinctive brand of astral Americana music. On Baltimore, their latest album for Centripetal Force, the duo build upon their sound and vastly broaden their horizons with perhaps their most expansive and exploratory release yet. From celestial dronescapes to rural psychedelic boogies, Harrison and Felton have stretched their wings and crafted a lush sonic world for listeners to completely immerse themselves into. If you ever need an escape, just place the needle on this record, close your eyes, and Tacoma Park will take you somewhere peaceful and endlessly dreamy.
To develop their songs, the duo creates a versatile framework of minimalist drones and loose chord progressions to later improvise over with layers of overdubbed cosmic synths and guitars. With their second album being a pandemic record, they learned to build up and shape their songs by hand from individual pieces. They often cut up improvised jams, splice together the best and most interesting parts, process and manipulate those recordings, and then layer in new instrumental tracks. The resulting mix is a hallucinatory soundscape that transports the listener far away to hazy yet colorful distant planes.
After three stellar albums and several singles later, Tacoma Park is still finding new paths to follow within the spectrum of their distinctive brand of astral Americana music. On Baltimore, their latest album for Centripetal Force, the duo build upon their sound and vastly broaden their horizons with perhaps their most expansive and exploratory release yet. From celestial dronescapes to rural psychedelic boogies, Harrison and Felton have stretched their wings and crafted a lush sonic world for listeners to completely immerse themselves into. If you ever need an escape, just place the needle on this record, close your eyes, and Tacoma Park will take you somewhere peaceful and endlessly dreamy.
Photo by Tacoma Park
Photo by Brett Villena
