Bleep

Press Release

The tender avant-soul blooz of LA Timpa is spotlighted by Halcyon Veil following Timpa’s beautiful damaged, under-the-radar 2019 debut.

After marking himself one-to-watch with ‘Equal Amounts Afraid’ for the O___o? label, run by underground LDN catalyst Koyejo Oloko, LA Timpa leads on from the diaristic vignettes of Wayne Phoenix, issued earlier in 2020 on Halcyon Veil, with a vulnerable, gauzy expression of outsider soul in ‘Modern Antics in a Deserted Place’. The “place” of his title could be practically anywhere during lockdown, and his music’s mix of textured collage, warped ambient, and hunkered songcraft surely fits the mood of frayed and brooding minds in gutted cities with a timely and timeless bedroom pop appeal.

The album’s nine songs unfurl in effortlessly beguiling shapes, poetically eliding cut-up rhythms and plaintive chants on ‘Quarterback’, while ‘Deaf in Three Corners’ mints an iridescent mix of folksy pop and keening electronics a la Panda Bear that leans into the dream-pop propulsion of album centrepiece ‘Pomisea’, and the lush simulacra of street noise psychedelia and distress in ‘Common’.

Timpa’s genteel flux then settles down on the B-side with a heart stroked slice of close-mic’d songcraft from the Smog handbook in ‘Wicked’, and slopes off into the oneiric reversed loops and opiated murmur of ‘Best Friend’, and ’Spin’ touches on Lou Reed levels of dirgy drawl sprinkled with ambient fairydust that appears to curdle in the sore harmonic waste of his ‘Tongue Tear Drum’ kiss-off.