“Prisms” is a truly collaborative effort between me, Ross Kirshenbaum, and my dear friend, and long-time music collaborator, Gregory Flores (flowersss.bandcamp.com). Greg and I were working on an album together before COVID hit, where I would bring Greg the barebones of a song, and he would use his production magic to transform it into something much more strange and beautiful. This song started out on acoustic guitar, very simple and minimal. My focus was on the melody and lyrics. I wanted to write about this feeling I’ve had my whole life…of feeling at odds with the built-up, material world around us…an empty grief I couldn’t name because I wasn’t sure what was missing. I felt the idea of a prism- showing us that sunlight is made from a whole spectrum of colors- was a fitting metaphor for exploring beyond the implicit facade that late-stage capitalism shows us. When we look beyond the face value of our lives and surroundings, what more can we know?
Here’s what Greg has to say about the production of Prisms: I have loved Ross since we met in 2000 and it has always been an honor to work together on their music. Often their prompts for production are not concrete sonic ideas but rather porous and flowing conversations where songs turn out completely surprising to the both of us. We followed this path with "Prisms" and it was an act of discovery the whole way through. Overall, in a very simple way, I wanted to capture the feeling of a prism, like light bending through glass and splashing a woozy rainbow across the wall. There are meditation bells reversing in and out, and there is a tape machine playing back a looped sample I had made a year prior for a completely different project. There are live drums and drum machines, guitars and modular synths, home-studio things laying around, waiting for their use. At a certain point I started muting tracks, leaving as little as possible, and only bringing tracks back in at particular lyrical moments. I realized just recently that the sparse bass in the intro is calling back to the Levoneh song "Wouldn't Dare" from What On Earth, a song I had helped produce a decade ago. That's the most rewarding part of having a multi-decade musical relationship with someone: new ideas mingle with old ones and so the depth and meaning of our collaboration grows with every year. Very lucky.
Make sure to pre-order Levoneh's upcoming album here.
"Ground" is being released via Cruisin Records. They have also teamed up with Lost Sound Tapes for a limited run of cassettes!