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ST 071LP
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"Kurt Vile once sang that he had a freeway in mind, but Matt Kivel (Vile's former Woodsist labelmate) literally has a freeway mind. He started out in music as part of the buzzy, Eagle Rock-based indie band Princeton, toured the country relentlessly, burned out, and then resurfaced with a series of bleak, hauntingly spare solo albums that garnered widespread critical acclaim. Over the ensuing decade, Kivel collaborated closely with a growing set of brilliant, and varied musicians from across the globe, including Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Alasdair Roberts, Madi Diaz, Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, Jana Horn, and Satomimagae. In 2017, he started writing the songs for what would become his eighth solo album, Escape from L.A., an autobiographical song cycle that chronicles the first 33 years of Kivel's life in the City of Angels. The material was labored over, rewritten, rearranged, and rerecorded numerous times, between LA, New York, and Austin. It involved over 20 collaborators, a string section, pedal steel guitars, and a renewed lyrical and vocal clarity that allows the narrative vignettes to unspool in vivid detail. Kivel sings about freeway pile ups, the Northridge earthquake, the fall of the twin towers as transmitted via television news, the glitter of Hollywood celebrities, and a mythical tsunami that could wipe out all of LA and then pairs it with the quotidian details of his life -- teenage romances on the beach, a dying dog, the failure of his first band set against the backdrop of Vampire Weekend's meteoric rise, a meditative conversation with his twin brother outside Dodger stadium, and, strikingly, the tale of his family's move to Los Angeles in 1988, spurred by the casting of his father in the baseball epic The Natural, alongside Robert Redford. It's a beautiful, grounded statement and one of Kivel's best."
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LP
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OESB 077LP
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"The debut solo album by Los Angeles based musician Matt Kivel. Double Exposure was recorded over the span of a year and a half in various L.A. locations with the assistance of Mark Nieto and it was mixed by Paul Oldham. The album art features original paintings by Max Markowitz. 'Most of the record was done at this rehearsal space that Mark had moved into above Solutions Audio in Los Feliz. He was living there and there was no shower. It was pretty gnarly. We would meet at night, drink whiskey, and talk about music... I was watching a lot of movies -- I have this ambitious program where I'm trying to watch the entire Criterion Collection. A lot of those films influenced the work on this record: Kurosawa's Ran and Pasolini's Salo left a big impression on me. Salo is one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen. Other things that I was into at the time of this record: John Renbourn The Lady and the Unicorn, Saul Bellow's Herzog, Broadcast Tender Buttons, Fennesz Endless Summer, John Woo's The Killer, Peter Weir's Picnic At Hanging Rock, Steve McQueen's Hunger, Bert Jansch Lucky 13, and lots of Nick Drake.' -- Matt Kivel."
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