Finding inspiration in tender psychedelia, existential poetry & literature, and the woollier, more expansive realm of the punk rock canon, Local Tourist have fashioned a sound out of defiant vulnerability.

Co-produced by band members Erin Umstead & Joe Sampson, Other Ways of Living feels both hushed and pronounced, earthy and otherworldly. The songs themselves open gradually with a wary strength, like battered coastal flowers in the morning sunlight. Sampson and Dalley underpin Umstead’s steady slow burners with understated, unfurling interplay. At once Umstead’s voice is the centerpiece – holding low and sagacious while ember-glow guitars smolder with an almost devotional quality. The effect is warming. A peaceful pull inward.

But it’s the attention to detail here which most enchants: the candescent, ever-so-warbled guitar tones, Umstead’s sedate phrasing, the perfectly luminous production throughout. Perhaps the album’s greatest feat is the way it leans into dark spaces without ever falling on oppressive terrain. Rather, each song maintains a steady flame, buoyant like proud little boats atop uneasy seas.

With Other Ways of Living Local Tourist have offered up a gentle burner for all seasons.

2023 Grammy Award nominee!

Soporus is the musical duo of Matthew Stone and William Stichter, childhood friends who have played in bands together for over 25 years. Formed in 2003 to explore their shared interest in ambient music and honed after-hours while playing together in instrumental rock group Saxon Shore, Soporus combines shifting drone with shimmering glacial melody that builds into dense layers of enveloping sound. Stone and Stichter craft songs primarily on guitar and bass, using careful techniques that often obscure their origins, and add accents of keyboard, electronics, and field recordings.

DIVERS, their sixth release, continues their musical trajectory as well as the themes of the frightening power of nuclear reactions, a long-time inspiration in their work. The album was completed in the often apocalyptic-feeling spring of 2020, lending an unsettled undercurrent to the otherwise soothing sounds.

The DIVERS LP is pressed on black vinyl with a printed inner sleeve and download card and comes housed in a sliding letterpress-printed outer sleeve that reveals different parts of the artwork underneath. Each copy was hand-fed into a flatbed, hand-cranked proofing press from the late 1930s by the band members.

Like the movie itself, SWISH BLADE’S soundtrack for the documentary RAW! UNCUT! VIDEO! celebrates intimacy while existing in a space shared by defiance, tenderness, lust, sorrow, anger, and humor. There is a simmering unease that never completely boils over and is often obscured by how rich and sensual the textures are. Using found sound, cut up sampling, synthesized keys, drum machines, and piano, SWISH BLADE creates an environment that is centered around the push and pull of emotive expression.

Pressed on yellow vinyl with printed inner sleeves and download code.

Back Forty, the debut solo album of Seattle singer-songwriter Rob Joynes, is a collection of pensive, hummable songs that find power and emotional resonance in restraint. Sam Rosson’s clean and clear production gives the instruments a vibrancy that is complimented by Rob’s candid lyrics. The songs are concise and carefully-constructed, and while deeply personal, they also speak to universal themes of love, grief, family, and finding one’s place in the world. Occasionally, a debut album comes along that presents a fully-formed picture of the artist’s direction and aesthetic, and listening to it, you can feel that the artist has a long and accomplished career ahead of them. Back Forty is one such album.

If you live in the Seattle-Tacoma area and would like to pick up your order, please enter the code SEATTLE at checkout to waive the shipping fee.

Because of a delay at the record pressing plant, records are expected to ship within the next couple of weeks. CDs will ship right away.

Released September 18, 2020.

Forever Falling is an instrumental, melodic, almost-ambient collaboration between Seattle musicians Joshua Daniel and Paul Gonzenbach that explores the beauty and expressive qualities of subtle tones and layered textures, juxtaposing elements that sometimes fight and sometimes harmonize with each other. Forever Falling’s five pieces avoid traditional song structure, expanding or contracting in unexpected ways. The result is dreamlike and, at times, hallucinatory songs that are sometimes lulling and sometimes disorienting. It’s the kind of album that sounds completely different in different contexts, one where you hear something new on each listen.

Comes with download code. Available in black or red vinyl, same price. Red vinyl copies come with a hand-screened jacket.

Masc Acting is the musical project of artist Jonathan Bell Wolfe. His music layers cascades of shimmering guitars over keys and drum machine, with the occasional recorder thrown in. His third album Rhododendron was recorded in all live takes, giving it an immediate, intuitive feeling. Rhododendron has its own logic that steers songs in unexpected directions, and its own language of loops, melodies, and textures. Pinning down the lush music is Wolfe’s tenor vocals, which speak of love, queer identity and experience, the natural world, and grief.

2LP galaxy swirl vinyl in gatefold sleeve with download code.

Australian singer-songwriter Remy Boccalatte’s new album Swimming Over Faultlines on False Peak Records, available in the US through Lovers Weekend. Gatefold sleeve, 180g vinyl.

With two decades spent hiking the musical trail, Remy Boccalatte is no stranger to the climb. From his previous work with The Paper and the Plane, Hungry Kids of Hungary and Spring Skier, to his current projects We Set Sail and An Heirloom, Boccalatte has traversed all manner of indie terrain, from sunshine to the shadows, drawing together a wide range of influences as he has traipsed along the path.

With his debut solo release “Swimming Over Faultlines”, Boccalatte has once again been on anything but a simple stroll. Thematically a meditation on love, loss and learning, the album finds its footing, and Boccalatte, his voice, through introspection and metaphor, culminating in an aurally-stunning realisation of release.

“Swimming Over Faultlines” finds an artist engaged with his muse, all elements in communion. Imbued with a hope amidst the searching, Boccalatte embraces openness as a strength and leaves the listener with an enduring sense that the only piece left to uncover is his audience.

Released September 13, 2019.

2LP colored vinyl with gatefold sleeve, lyrics zine, download code

Omens is a Christmas album that consists of four long, original tracks that examine aspects of the Christmas story as well as our modern relationship with faith and the holiday season.

The white 12" lathe cut of Christmas album Omens includes 7 double-sided posters that juxtapose engravings of the Passion of Christ with vintage photographs of a locust metamorphosing. The album was written, recorded, and mixed with the intention of it being heard on lathe cut. 

A lathe cut is not vinyl, and sounds significantly different!

The Unreachable Distance was originally released on October 13, 2017.

Double splatter vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve. Includes a poster and lyrics zine. The LP version of the album includes an alternate track listing with the bonus track "Shallows."

Released September 14, 2016

2LP splatter vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with lyrics zine.

Avalanche Kiss was released in October of 2008.

Enforcer was released in July of 2007.

Standard option is on random-colored vinyl with lyrics zine.

Deluxe version comes with two lathes: a 7” for the song “Kevin Decline” and an 8” of live recordings of songs from Enforcer called “Where We Went Wrong.”