The Antlers frontman Peter Silberman working on a solo album which is “not coming out for a while,” and while we patiently await that, he’s given us an ambient EP that he recorded in 2013. (The solo album will be more traditionally-structured songs.) The EP is out now digitally and it will be on cassette in mid-October via People Teeth (pre-order). Here’s some context on the recording, via Peter’s tumblr:
I’d been spending the better part of that summer in Portland, OR, during a pause midway through the Brooklyn-based Familiars sessions. One evening, as an extension of a thought-experiment, Nicholas Principe match-made engineer Tim Shrout and me, and we chose a date to track something.
Biking across town to the session a few days later, I had no agenda. When I encountered the studio’s vivid arsenal of vintage gear, I didn’t have any concrete ideas. And when Tim (who had so generously donated his time, space, and expertise) asked me what I wanted to do, I didn’t really have an answer. I only hoped to liberate the pent-up potential energy of the moment.
Listening to its twenty minutes now, I experience a fleeting era distilled into a single day. I hear the first few miles of a long ride, hands released from handlebars’ grip, arms splayed out to the sides, coasting with abandon, rounding a blind corner without worry for what might slam into me beyond the immediately visible.
In the three years since Transcendless Summer’s spontaneous birth, the color’s bled and faded some, filled in with a wiser vibrance only time could provide. These tracks have felt three summers melt away, relearning the same cruelty each year: that summer’s start initiates a countdown to its end, that the first day’s light stretches infinitely outward before shrinking back from a dilating night.
You can listen to a full stream of the EP, via Spotify, below. Peter also has solo shows coming up, including that one at NYC’s Trans-Pecos on Monday (9/19) with Dave Harrington (Darkside), Tim Mislock (Antlers, Hedwig band), and Kaki King (tickets). All dates are listed after the album stream.
Peter Silberman — 2016 Tour Dates
Sep 19 – Ridgewood, NY @ Trans-Pecos
Nov 7 – Los Angeles, CA @ Resident
Nov 11 – San Francisco, CA @ Swedish American Hall
Nov 14 – Seattle, WA @ Triple Door
Nov 16 – Portland, OR @ The Old Church
Dec 7 – London, UK @ Forge
Dec 8 – London, UK @ Forge