Charming and churning, heat and wondrous, Isaac Watters’ ‘Prolonged Play 002’ is a contemplative assortment of light giants: Intimate reflections that sound candy and hit onerous.

for followers of Sufjan Stevens, Leif Vollebekk, Ken Yates

Stream: ‘Prolonged Play 002’ – Isaac Watters

“Can you hear me now?” Isaac Watters asks towards the top of his new EP, his voice filled with an intense ache as he sings into the ether – an abyss that guarantees extra questions and no solutions. “Are you able to hear me now? I used to be making an attempt to grasp how the daylight slides by your fingers…” And whereas Watters could not get any direct response from his rhetorical targets, we will hear him, and we will see him. Charming and churning, heat and wondrous, Watters’ Prolonged Play 002 is a contemplative assortment of light giants: Intimate reflections that sound candy and hit onerous, demanding our undivided consideration because the artist spills his soul.

Let’s make it simple, let’s get out of city
The place you may, sit me down
And inform me tales,
remind me how we bought right here

‘Trigger proper now, all I see,
piling up behind me is a cloud
A fireplace on both facet,
and in entrance simply the daylight dying.

Are you able to hear me now? I used to be making an attempt so onerous
Are you able to hear me now? I used to be making an attempt to
perceive
How the daylight slides by your fingers
To know how the daylight slides

Atwood Journal is proud to be premiering Prolonged Play 002, Isaac Watters’ fascinating four-track sophomore EP (out August 30, 2023 by way of hi-res data). The follow-up to this previous January’s Prolonged Play 001 continues the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter’s introduction, discovering him in a spacey and contemplative temper as he weaves collectively stirring sounds that really feel without delay intimate and distance, close to and much. With a light-weight contact that falls someplace in-between the indie people and psychedelic pop worlds, Watters’ songs are as cathartic as they’re totally entrancing – and he’s nonetheless simply getting began.

“I began engaged on these songs with a number of totally different producers, however began working with Matt Linesch shortly after one other mission fizzled,” Watters tells Atwood Journal. “It began as a mixture of some songs that I had written a very long time in the past and newer songs. It was principally written round 2018, however a few of it was written in 2020. “All I Want” was a tune that we went backwards and forwards on and labored on collectively. The opposite three songs on this EP I wrote on my own over a number of years. Everyone that performed on it actually made the report what it’s, Josh Adams and Gabe Noel, Mitchell Yoshida, Mark Noseworthy, and on background vocals Crash Richard and Sydney Wayser. We made it over the pandemic. So we began initially in 2018, after which when the pandemic occurred, there was nearly an entire 12 months of nothing occurring. After we began going again in, it was gradual. Mixing took a very long time. We completed the report on the finish of 2021, after which hi-res data ultimately got here on to assist us launch it.”

“Plenty of the songs modified, and a part of that was working with Matt, and half was working with Josh and Gabe. Each tune would begin with monitoring me with a scratch guitar monitor and vocal, Josh on drums and Gabe on bass – which is why a lot of the report ended up being these loopy bass traces which are beginning songs. It let me mess around with the phrasing in ways in which I wasn’t doing earlier than. A few of the songs grew to become double time, and among the songs grew to become slower. Simply feeling it out, singing together with drums and bass, that’s how we began each tune.”

“I feel that lent itself to the way in which that the entire report ended up sounding. I feel I used to be additionally at some extent in my life the place I felt like I used to be simply doing no matter I needed to do, and never essentially making an attempt to sound like any individual that I actually like. Simply doing my very own factor, and I feel it seems like my very own factor, greater than a whole lot of the opposite data that I’ve made. The imaginative and prescient that I had going into it was, “How do I make this factor that may actually fulfill me, that seems like me, with out worrying about what it’s going to do?” Or if it’s going to be one thing that lots of people will hearken to, or if it might sound like one thing that’s profitable or something like that. I simply needed to make one thing that I might be pleased with, and that I might give to my 10 associates.”

The ensuing report is radiant and relaxed, beating to the tune of its personal drum and nothing else.

Watters’ simple gait makes him come off as a person with little care on the earth, and but his lyrics inform a distinct story. That dichotomy involves life in 4 songs filled with enthusiastic vitality, every an island unto itself beckoning our ears and hearts to return nearer.

I do know the earth’s land mass is usually antipodal
To the lonely sea, to the lonely sea
Oh yeah, however possibly that’s the one technique to speak about heartache
If you’re out within the grasslands once you’re wild and free

Possibly someplace there’s a shore the place
i might wash up on you
And also you’d let me float you, and also you’d say i was sturdy,
Possibly someplace there’s a shoreline
the place you possibly can look out on me
Say i was magnificent, say nothing was flawed

They are saying the earth’s oceans are principally getting hotter
That the ice is melting, and i understand it’s true
Possibly sometime quickly, possibly prior to later
The entire world shall be ocean, and also you’ll be lonesome too

“My hope could be that individuals would hearken to it after which go see it stay,” Watters says. “I really feel like my stay present captures extra, and other people can get a greater sense of what I’m doing and what I’m placing on the road once they can see it stay. It’s onerous to get that on a report. Hopefully individuals are at the very least like, “Oh, that is fascinating. He’s coping with some weightier themes.” Possibly it makes them need to dig deeper and attempt to perceive what I’m making an attempt to do. Hopefully these are songs that individuals need to hearken to greater than as soon as. “

As for favorites, the EP’s newest single “My Coronary heart Is an Ocean” is a transparent standout for its maker. “I actually like this model,” he smiles. “I’ve accomplished a pair different variations earlier than, and that is the primary one which I actually needed to place out. It’s simple to make it really feel like a folksy nation tune. However the synths add this additional layer to it. After we had been making it we had been speaking about it sounding just like the Santa Monica Pier falling into the ocean, a kind of decaying. There’s this film [Southland Tales] with Justin Timberlake and The Rock, and Justin Timberlake is a sniper on the Santa Monica pier after the atomic bomb goes off in Texas, and the U.S. is underneath Marshall regulation. It was sort of a horrible however superb film.. However we had been making an attempt to make one thing like that.. There’s all this synth stuff, all this clicking, feels just like the curler coaster descending and crushing into the ocean.

Lyrically, Watters cites moments in all 4 tracks that resonate with him.

“For “All I Want,” my favourite lyric is “I see myself in an previous spaceship / Additional out than Mr Collins went” – the astronaut, however then it turns into me flying that spaceship inward, into an enormous inner loneliness. That separate loneliness, that even should you’re in a loving relationship and have a lot of good associates, you understand you continue to have. Who doesn’t take pleasure in an outer area / internal area metaphor?”

“And there’s a similarity in “My Coronary heart is an Ocean.” The refrain line, the thought – if I’m the ocean, possibly there’s some extent in life, or level in a relationship the place they may look out on me as in the event that they had been the land, and say “there’s nothing flawed with you,” or “you’re magnificent.” On “Coconut within the Avenue,” it’s “plastic bag.” That is probably the most enjoyable to carry out. The repetition of “plastic bag” and the phrasing of “dwelling within the median, I can see you drive by” – that half is actually enjoyable. After which in “Can You Hear Me Now,” it’s the final verse. The best way that final verse breaks down and the drums come again in. The road “I’ll name you once more when i’ve figured it out / How the ache nonetheless seeps in behind the glass / You mentioned, “all you want is one good paragraph.” It’s this concept, what if one thing may very well be higher? What if it may very well be good?”

Brief although it could be, Prolonged Play 002 is a surprising snapshot of an artist coming into his personal.

Along with 001, Watters’ new EP is a enjoyable fever dream that defies simple categorization; a report that involves life with heat and marvel, swish melodies and glistening vocals filled with turbulence and uncooked turmoil.

“I liked writing and making this report, and it feels nice to have a model of those tunes that sounds this good,” Watters shares. “Placing it out is an entire different dialog. How do you get anyone to take the time to pay attention? There’s simply a lot good music that’s already out on the earth. However I hope individuals who take the time to pay attention really feel comforted by it.”

Expertise the complete report by way of our beneath stream, and peek inside Isaac Watters’ Prolonged Play 002 EP with Atwood Journal as he goes track-by-track by the music and lyrics of his sophomore EP!

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Stream: ‘Prolonged Play 002’ – Isaac Watters

:: Inside Prolonged Play 002 ::

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All I Want

I began writing “All I Want” in Joshua Tree. I used to be staying on the market for a few weeks in a tiny cabin. It was a part of an extended stream of consciousness that simply got here out. After which once I was enjoying a few of it again for [producer] Matt Linesch, he actually gravitated to that opening refrain. I took that and reworked it somewhat bit.

Coconut In The Streets

After I was scripting this report, I might rise up and write earlier than I did the rest, or checked out any screens or something. I might simply write for an hour. This tune got here out of a type of morning writing periods. If you’re driving down Alvarado the place it crosses Glendale, there are at all times these guys promoting mangoes from a grocery bag. I see them every single day, and typically purchase from them. That’s the place that one breakdown refrain half got here from. That’s what I at all times image once I’m singing this half. The remainder of the tune is different scenes round LA, folks stumbling onto the sides of the freeway. It’s the saddest factor, however I see it on a regular basis.

My Coronary heart Is An Ocean

This one I wrote a very long time in the past. Someday it simply got here out unexpectedly. It was only a tacky metaphor, however then I believed, if I might take all of it the way in which then it’d not be as cliche. Everyone says “my love’s an ocean,” or “my love is as large because the ocean,” or “my love is as deep because the ocean.” However what if it actually was an ocean? Then what’s the ocean doing proper now? I felt like once I took it a number of steps additional, it’s additionally about ice caps melting, the violence of nature, the age of the anthropocene, the Gulf Stream dying.

Can You Hear Me Now

There’s a pair other ways you possibly can give it some thought. Possibly the primary half is a dialog with God second, wrestling with destiny. After which a part of it may very well be describing a cellphone name with my brother. I wrote this tune some time in the past, once I was nonetheless single and I had a whole lot of time. I might simply wander across the neighborhood that I lived in, Historic Filipinotown. The final verse is a selected picture from one in all my lengthy walks –  there was an deserted lot that had actually brilliant inexperienced grass from the rain. It was within the winter when LA will get rain and all the pieces’s clear, it was actually lovely. However there was nonetheless unhappiness. That lot isn’t there anymore, it’s now an house constructing, which is an efficient factor, however I at all times see that recent inexperienced grass once I’m singing, and the fading graffiti behind it.

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