Lake Mary
Lake Mary
Chaz Prymek’s oeuvre is staggering. At the age of 35, the Missouri-based guitarist / multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor has released nearly two dozen recordings under the name Lake Mary, either solo or in collaboration. And over the course of 2020 and 2021, as part of the Fuubutsushi quartet, he released an acclaimed suite of four seasonal ambient jazz records. There is a spectrum of styles, influences, and effects in the Lake Mary catalogue, but all of it can be characterized by patience and a kind of measured beauty. Often longform, the music of Lake Mary moves within the rather open bounds of what might be called organic ambient or extended studies of American Primitive music.And so it is the case with the utterly graceful Slow Grass. Comprised of one long piece of music totaling 40 minutes, separated into a few movements and split over two sides, this latest offering under the Lake Mary banner prominently features Prymek’s often fingerpicked acoustic guitar. His playing is spare but not without energy, and it moves through billows of violin, saxophone, nearly-transparent synthesizers, field recordings and the sirenic singing of Patrick Shiroishi, who is best known as one of the busiest and most versatile saxophone players in the contemporary American avant garde. (Indeed he also contributes saxophone here.) Somehow both modest and masterful, Shiroishi’s evocative singing calls out from and interweaves with a medium distance, not unlike Richard Youngs on his gentle epic, Sapphie or Sarah Davachi on “Play the Ghost.” Prymek meanwhile occasionally switches to playing with a slide or hammering his guitar like a dulcimer, experimenting, gently and masterfully, not only with the timbre of the guitar, but its narrative effect. The results are pastoral and achingly beautiful.
Fans of Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Mick Turner’s Get On Jolly or Kath Bloom’s work with Loren Connors will find much to love in this music. But Slow Grass is not merely a reflection of records that have come before it. Everything that happens on Slow Grass feels informed by relationships and vivid presence –– presence of mind, presence of memories, sonic presence. The fact that Prymek plays so often and so generously with so many different players is itself a framework for hearing the music. This music is nothing if not generous, open, and warm. It is music that proceeds from and returns to tenderness. In fact, it is an elegy. Prymek wrote Slow Grass while his beloved dog Favorite’s health was declining throughout 2019 and 2020, and the work is named for the moments toward the very end of Favorite’s life when she became immobile, and Prymek and she would simply lay and watch the grass grow. “Life is full of pain,” says the late John Berger. “Tenderness is in part a response to that. But it is also something else. In the face of what is so often surrounding us, tenderness is an almost defiant act of freedom.” Slow Grass is like this. It is tender to the extent that it feels defiant, like shelter is defiant. Prymek says that his playing on the second movement is “an older style of playing,” similar to how he played guitar at that time, 14 years ago, when he first got Favorite. “It's important,” he says, “to remember your origin stories.” This is perhaps the key to Slow Grass. Though we cannot undo the pain of loss, we can defy it by sheltering what and how we have loved. Slow Grass may be born of heartache, but it is not mourning music. To treat memories –– even painful ones –– with tenderness; to treat collaborators with tenderness; to treat instruments with tenderness is to defy callousness. Slow Grass does all of this to a staggering effect.
Limited to 200 180 gram vinyl records.
Comes with full color insert designed by Chaz Prymek
Mastered by Andrew Weathers
Layout and Design by Jordan Knecht
Chaz Prymek’s ongoing Lake Mary project transcended the boundaries of a mere solo project long ago, having evolved into an ever-shifting collective of like-minded artists, performers and spiritual seekers with deep ties to Colorado’s Front Range and the sprawling Missouri plains. With a stunningly executed catalog of releases for labels like Eilean Rec., Patient Sounds International and Cabin Floor Esoterica, we’ve enjoyed watching [and hearing] their transformation into this latest iteration: Lake Mary & The Ranch Family Band.
A sort of unofficial follow-up to River Ceremony – the ensemble’s 2018 release for Keeled Scales – Sun Dogs traverses a similar, albeit more focused, aesthetic terrain. As always – Chaz honed the vision for these seven tracks during numerous tour dates and studio sessions, workshopping melodic ideas and transmogrifying his band’s raw improvisations into structured compositions.
From the elegiac slide guitar work of album opener “Holy Radio,” to the motorik underpinnings of the title track and the quiet, winding guitar solos that pepper the track list, the end result is a suite of chilled folk, drone and ambient jammers that perhaps stand
Vicky Mettler / Lake Mary Limited Edition Cassette Tape
Vicky Mettler Side A
Lake Mary Side B
Limited to 100 copies.
Design and Layout by Dustin Bowen
Mastered by Andrew Weathers
These pieces were recorded in Montreal, QC in 2014. They are early compositions that de-construct ideas stemming from improvisation techniques I was exploring at the time. These solo compositions would later lead to a song project ‘Kee Avil’.
Chaz Prymek’s oeuvre is staggering. At the age of 35, the Missouri-based guitarist / multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor has released nearly two dozen recordings under the name Lake Mary, either solo or in collaboration. And over the course of 2020 and 2021, as part of the Fuubutsushi quartet, he released an acclaimed suite of four seasonal ambient jazz records. There is a spectrum of styles, influences, and effects in the Lake Mary catalogue, but all of it can be characterized by patience and a kind of measured beauty. Often longform, the music of Lake Mary moves within the rather open bounds of what might be called organic ambient or extended studies of American Primitive music.
And so it is the case with the utterly graceful Slow Grass. Comprised of one long piece of music totaling 40 minutes, separated into a few movements and split over two sides, this latest offering under the Lake Mary banner prominently features Prymek’s often fingerpicked acoustic guitar. His playing is spare but not without energy, and it moves through billows of violin, saxophone, nearly-transparent synthesizers, field recordings and the sirenic singing of Patrick Shiroishi, who is best known as one of the busiest and most versatile saxophone players in the contemporary American avant garde. (Indeed he also contributes saxophone here.) Somehow both modest and masterful, Shiroishi’s evocative singing calls out from and interweaves with a medium distance, not unlike Richard Youngs on his gentle epic, Sapphie or Sarah Davachi on “Play the Ghost.” Prymek meanwhile occasionally switches to playing with a slide or hammering his guitar like a dulcimer, experimenting, gently and masterfully, not only with the timbre of the guitar, but its narrative effect. The results are pastoral and achingly beautiful.
PRESS
NPR MUSIC, LARS GOTRICH
What began as a solo project from Chaz Prymek has turned into a prairie-raised choogle ensemble. Streaks of motorik rhythms occasionally bless these astral country ditties, but mostly they chase the sunlight.
RAVEN SINGS THE BLUES
Rooted in a rambling fingerpick that recalls contemporaries William Tyler and Nathan Salsburg, Sun Dogs‘ prowess lies in deploying buttered slides throughout the entire record that yearn for a perennial peace. The record seamlessly folds in psych-touches on the album’s title track, finding the common crannies between fingerpicked folk and Kosmiche float.