Earlier this month, orchid mantis – also known as the bedroom pop project of Atlanta-based artist Thomas Howard – announced the upcoming release of his new EP there is one place we’re all going. Since the project’s start in 2014, Howard has brilliantly utilized obscure samples and employed stylized recording techniques, with each release further solidifying achieving a highly unique sound that often traverses far beyond mere nostalgia and instead impossibly captures, in its oscillation between temporalities, something like sheer immanence. Howard explained his intentions with the EP with the announcement:
“since the beginning, i always wanted to create something that merged my ambient work with my pop songwriting, something with an even split. i had to wait until the songs made sense for it, though. this EP (or mini-album i guess) came together through an attempt to strip back the instrumentation i’ve developed over years and write something simple.”
“wish i could be there” is the third and final single from the EP, following the short, stunning “canine teeth” featuring vocals from fog lake, along with the serene “rainwater on the windowsill,” a song “all about the passage of time and the way multiple phases of life blur into one long story, the ups and downs, ends and beginnings exactly as they were destined to be.” Memories seem to condense into one potent mass within “wish i could be there,” an ambient piano ballad that evokes the heaviness of dusk. Notes are heavy, grievous, almost opaque. Towards the end, it falters and evokes a stumble into past memories – a warped effect that breaks the illusion and pushes it into a different key – but only for a moment, before returning back to the present again.
there is one place we’re all going is out 8/4. Pre-order it here.
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photo courtesy of artist
kid with a vinyl 