(2023) LA Priest - Fase Luna    


Review:
Fase Luna is the ocean-inspired, wobbly-pop filled third album, by LA Priest, aka Sam Eastgate. Following 2020’s GENE, named after a modular drum machine that Sam designed using 150 electrical circuits he’d built himself, Fase Luna strips things back to little more than Sam and his guitar: nine sunshine-streaked tracks of pure bliss. Recording in Mexico and the rainforests of Costa Rica, Fase Luna draws inspiration from each area’s mythical history and ancient connections to the ocean, drawing heavily on both to pack Fase Luna with stories of spirits and imaginations of life on the ocean bed. Raw and unfiltered, Fase Luna offers a one-way ticket to another world. Variously known as Sam Dust, LA Priest and L.A. Priest, Eastgate has built a reputation as a subversive, unpredictable musician, consistently innovating over the course of his work with his now defunct breakout band Late Of The Pier, his cherished Soft Hair collaboration with Connan Mockasin as well as his solo work under LA Priest. Following the release of GENE, Sam received requests to build drum machines around the world, with one correspondent from Belize eventually inviting him over to work at their studio. And so, at the beginning of 2021, Sam upped sticks to swap the Welsh borders for central America, only to find upon arrival in Mexico that he would be unable to actually get into Belize due to travel restrictions. In that instant, what would become the third LA Priest album changed completely. Marooned by the beach in Puerto Morelos, Sam found inspiration from the sea. From the gently warped guitars on super-chilled opener “On”, through to the slow and tender closing track “No More”, each song on Fase Luna weaves and undulates into the next, creating an immersive whole. Recording in Mexico and the rainforests of Costa Rica, Sam was struck by each area’s mythical history and ancient connections to the ocean, drawing heavily on both to pack Fase Luna with stories of spirits and imaginations of life on the ocean bed. Without a synthesiser in sight, this is the purest LA Priest record yet. And with drums laid down by local musician Carlos Gabriel Favela Manzano in Mexico as Sam hummed the melodies, the closest the record gets to modern technology of any kind is the translation tool he used to write the Spanish lyrics of far out “fairy story”, “Sail On”. Raw and unfiltered, Fase Luna offers a one-way ticket to another world. “I want to give people a feeling that they’re free when they listen to it, it’s not bringing you back to reality, it’s escapism.” — dominomusic


   


Track List:
01. On
02. Silent
03. It's You
04. Misty
05. Star
06. Sail On
07. Neon
08. Ocean
09. No More


Media Report:
Genre: electronic, indie-pop
Country: UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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