“Suntraps” is a beautiful sonic pastoral by Casey Scott influenced through his study of yoga and meditation.
During the past two years, as I have mentioned before in this blog, I found myself lost in a world of ambient and instrumental music, even my 7 year old daughter asks Alexa to “play ambient music” before bedtime. It can be immersive music to aid stress and anxiety, relief in challenging times or just solace or simple numbness. Even without the pandemic, 2020 and 2021 could have been a stand out year for ambient music.
Stepping into 2022 and Team Love Records serve up “Suntraps” from Casey Scott – relaxing music to combat work stress or to accompany you on a solitary walk or just sitting to unwind.
Casey Scott played bass in Athens, Georgia based bands Drip and Lona, in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, when he started working with Bright Eyes. He toured with the band in 1999 and 2003, and recorded on Lifted. In art college, he specialised in photography, and began making his own ‘Empty Music’ as non-intrusive background for projections his photo and video work. Radiohead’s OK Computer, Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin, Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works and DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing were in heavy rotation. He made music during this time with a cassette 4track recorder and a Boss sampler. Experiments in self-production continued through Pro-Tools, Garageband and eventually Ableton.
“Suntraps has a strong sense of place for me- the main loop/ origin of the song was some keyboard I recorded on my phone at the school where I work. After all the layers, I can’t even make out the keyboard part anymore, but I hear voices I recognize, and this rhythmic clatter which was some of my guys playing a game like Hungry Hungry Hippos, with lots of plastic grabbing and noise. The video was shot in a single take and felt right with this song straight away” – Casey Scott
Since 2011 he has studied Yoga and Meditation (200 RYT), which tuned him into the uses of drone, chanting and repetition in spiritual practice. This meeting of home recording, traditional and electronic instrumentation, and long, held tones have resulted in the current set of songs, ORRERY, which will be released in Spring 2022, on Team Love Records.