Soft Airplane

Sound DNA

• Alt/Indie
• Indie Rock

• tender
• shimmering
• poetic

About

Chad Van Gaalen isn’t your ordinary singer-songwriter. Sure, he writes on keyboards and guitars, but from there he diverges from the usual path in unexpected ways. Each of his previous solo albums were culled from a rich catalog of existing home recordings but with his third album, 2008’s <i>Soft Airplane</i>, he sat down in his home basement studio with an old tape machine and boom box and deliberately put together this eclectic mix of lo-fi acoustic strumming and exotic synthetic keyboard magic. “Rabid Bits of Time” recalls the lonesome whine of Neil Young. “City of Electric Light” sounds like a man barely surviving the 4 a.m. hour, while “Old Man + the Sea” channels a primitive 3-dimensional world where the electronics haven’t quite been mastered and are likely to short out at a crucial moment. Van Gaalen loves these sudden distortions and interruptions; much in the spirit of acoustic Pink Floyd, there is always an unexpected room noise or ambient touch to bolster or upset the placid surface.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits