Travelogue by loamer

I met Dan Lynch aka Loamer in a tour van back in 2018. Since then he’s become a treasured collaborator and one of my best friends. The guy is a sonic alchemist with inclinations ranging from lo-fi karaoke machine drones to 11 string guitars shredding over blast beats. His new album, Travelogue is none of these things exactly but feels like a triumphant sublimation of his varied interests and inspirations.

The auditory imagery is vivid and lush, drifting like some sort of tangy psychedelic fruit juice into a primordial tar pit. Captured exclusively with a single SM-57 microphone, Dan plays every instrument heard across the album and defies what seems possible with such a bare bones recording rig. It’s a heady collection of pieces and each listen reveals new sounds and secrets. I love this album because it feels like a glimmering map obscured by a saccharine fog. It urges me to keep searching through it and keep listening to it. Loamer charts a course with this album that undeniably leads me somewhere intoxicating and new. -Saapato

These pieces of music all have one thing in common: they started with a simple, lightly processed field recording of an interesting place I spent time over the past year or so. In May of 2024, my partner Kate and I took a trip to Madeira. Field recordings from this trip feature heavily on the album, forming the basis of “Levada dos Cedros,” “Morning,” “Southern North Atlantic,”, and “Levada do Moinho.” These tracks are fully preoccupied with the breeze and beauty of that strange island. “Really Shouldn’t Be Up Here” is a different story, its underpinning field recording capturing the strangeness of flying in planes.

The other tracks find their origins closer to home. “End of Winter” sits in a moment just before the breaking of spring at Southwest Philadelphia’s Bartram’s Garden, heralded by the songs of urban stalwarts like robins, cardinals, and white throated sparrows. “By Rail” expands on the chaotic beauty of the 13 Trolley eastbound to Center City, Philadelphia. “Complaint” relishes nothing. There are two field recordings here, each from its own particularly miserable work experience, one camping out in the cold rain of Connecticut in April, and the other weeding a home garden along a New Jersey highway.

Loamer is Dan Lynch

Recorded, Mixed, and Mastered by Loaner at Undertemple II

Photos and Layout by Dan Lynch and Kate Naylor

Deep listening for the new, now age

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