Trevor Powers

follow-up to 2018’s Mulberry Violence kind of Mister Rogers hallucination. I also a fairy tale or alien quest. Fragmented and most alien. I wanted to make something that 68 Rock and Blues International • September 2020 god,” he says. “But it’s an illusion. We think we can dictate every day of our lives but that’s like playing chess during an earthquake. Sometimes the pieces move themselves.”

Drawing influence from Keiichi Koike’s Ultra Heaven, Richard Teschner’s puppets, and ancient folklore, Capricorn surfaced. After finding a cabin near the Sawtooth Mountains with an old piano, Powers filled his back seats with instruments, cassette recorders, and a computer, and left for a month alone. “We’ve forgotten how bizarre our planet is,” he explains. “Insects are their own gospel choir. Rain is a fucking fever dream. The more Earth I included, the more alien it felt.”

Capricorn, out via Fat Possum Records, paints a world of melancholia and unsettling beauty. Powers’ field recordings, classical motifs, and software sculptures don’t stop time; they examine it like a beetle under a microscope - exposing that the extraordinary is often hidden in plain sight. “From the minute we wake up, we’re in a trance,” he says. “This is music for our digital coma.”

photo credit: Jamie Powers The project is releasing alongside a book and cassette

TREVOR POWERS with artwork designed by Los Angeles’ Collin Fletcher whose practice is based on experimenta

RELEASES NEW ALBUM tion and collaboration with musicians and artists across a variety of fields including his VIA FAT POSSUM RECORDS work with Warp Records, Hood By Air, and Halcyon Veil. The book releasing alongside the Today, Trevor Powers is surprising streams, thunder but with their voices of photographs Trevor has taken over the last fans with the release of his new album mangled and played with. I fell in love with few years. Listen to Capricorn above, see Capricorn, available digitally and on cassette the idea that everything has a voice. Combinalbum details below, and stay tuned for more accompanied by a special edition book. The ing those with piano melodies felt like some from Trevor Powers coming soon. (Powers’ debut under his birth name) which created some crude digital instruments out of Trevor Powers NPR called “as gorgeous and ornate as it is noise pollution, like planes and highways - Capricorn bleakly unsettling,” the new album plays like but the most natural sounds were always the Fat Possum Records album also features a collection full of grace, Capricorn serves as a meditafelt as peaceful as it was haunting. Anything 1. First Rain tion on the passage of time - existing both in that did that and served the music, I made use 2. Earth To Earth the past and future. of.” 3. The Riverine 4. A New Name Speaking on the album, Powers says: After a severe panic attack made his 5. Ghosts of Shanghai “The field recordings are mostly a patchwork legs numb for a week, Powers knew 6. Blue Savior of nature: wind, insects, rain, birds, frogs, something had to change. “Control is our 7. Pest 8. 2166