Larry Goldings is a keyboardist, composer and producer based in Los Angeles. In the past, Goldings has received acclaim for his skills as a jazz musician, and as co-leader of his longstanding organ trio with Peter Bernstein and Bill Stewart. He has announced the release of a new album called Earthshine, which will be out on November 11th on Colorfield Records.

Check the first excerpt “Circling Hours“.

According to the press release, Part of the DNA of Earthine is Lucy’s Meat Market, a former butcher shop turned into studio based in Eagle Rock, CA. Run by Pete Min, the studio encourages artists to record without thinking and to tap into their subconscious. Randomness and chaos are part of the process and lead to unexpected results. It doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t know how to play drums, keyboards or guitar, Min and the artist are able to edit choice moments to use as part of the composition.

And so was the case with Goldings on Earthshine, who experimented with things like microtonality, mining the possibilities of converting audio to MIDI, and incorporating various found sounds, like icebergs, owls, and an old answering machine conversation. The record skirts repetition and was made without writing anything down; a test of spontaneity, where the lines between composition and improvisation blur.

Goldings noted that “the pandemic did allow my musical freak flag to fly a little higher. But it got lonely pretty quick. Having a collaborator like Pete [Min] was really important. Most of the compositions on this record were borne out of improvisations on a variety of instruments, some of which I was discovering for the first time, like fidgety analog synths or strange noise-based machines. Still, my goal was to take the listener on a sonically rich and emotional journey.”