Longboat – Photo Credit: John Alderson
Longboat mastermind Igor Keller is a rare example of someone who can dance gleefully through genres at will. On the new LP Out of Place, Keller sets aside his usual allegiance to the gods of rhythm. Shimmering, lush ambient waves of gain ebb and flow beneath cascading stacked vocals. Minimalist, grand percussion echoes like distant thunder. Heady and hypnotic, Out of Place is a haunting, windswept transmission from the primal core of Keller’s creativity. Bathe your psyche in the most cinematic and elemental of Longboat’s releases and be transported.
Keller exclusively told the Big Takeover: “Looking inward is a great source for music subject matter. But for this album, I chose to contemplate the surrounding indifferent world and my tenuous place in it. And sometimes, I didn’t like what I saw. We have access to the entire world at our fingertips, but the cognitive dissonance between our dystopian immediate environs and the rest of the planet gives us a reason to pause and assess. Until you can reconcile the two worlds, you’ll always feel out of place.”
This change in direction was intentional. Following the release of Basically Blue Volume 2 (the last of Longboat’s five electro-blues albums, and his 25th full-length release), Keller was ready for a change in approach. “I wanted to step outside of how I would ordinarily build an album,” he said, “so I slowed everything down and focused on vocal ensemble writing. I set my sights on writing an ‘ambient vocal album.’ I picked song starts that wanted to be expanded. That yielded tunes that were slower, more hypnotic and darker.”
In addition to the usual cohort of engineer Floyd Reitsma (Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews) and vocalist Ryan Leyva, Out of Place features vocalist Annie Jantzer (Courtney Marie Andrews, the Dip). “With notable exceptions, on this record I tried to incorporate elements of Gregorian chant into the main vocal line,” Keller explained. “Annie’s voice is amazing and she’s really great to work with. I’ve worked with Ryan tons of times and he’s sensational. I wrote their vocal lines to embellish and support said Gregorian elements.”
The record was written, produced and arranged by Keller; and recorded at Studio Litho in Seattle.
Check out the Big Takeover’s exclusive premiere of the album today:
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