Rewilding - Home Shore Highlights by Hidden Shoal

Taken from 'Rain Patch', out 10th April 2020.
More on Rewilding here: https://www.hiddenshoal.com/project/rewilding

Following on from 2017’s self-titled debut album, Rain Patch continues Rewilding’s exploration of the neglected, dusty spaces found between lo-fi indie-pop, post-rock and film soundtracks. While there are the obvious recent touchstones, such as Fridge, Beak and Olivia Tremor Control, and the less obvious, such as the soundtrack to cult 1980s sci-fi movie Liquid Sky, Rain Patch mines a primitive yet mesmerising vein of instrumental music in which process and result are intimately entwined. The songs on Rain Patch are their own ecosystems, requiring the listener to step inside to fully experience their vivid details.

This ecological analogy extends to the process of the album’s creation. In 2017, Jake McFee relocated to Glacier Bay, Alaska, where much of the album was conceived and recorded. Given the limitations of not being able to transport all the studio equipment he used on previous Rewilding music, he wrote and recorded many of the original ideas using small, portable instruments such as hand percussion, glockenspiel, acoustic guitar and mini Korg synths. The summers were spent at Glacier Bay, while winters were spent back in Philadelphia, where he was able to overdub drums and electric guitars. Between 2017 and 2019, the songs evolved into the forms heard on Rain Patch, as McFee reckoned with his experience of witnessing the pristine wilderness of Glacier Bay being transformed by climate change.

“Further Hidden Shoal loveliness... a set made up of intricately teased melodic miniatures with an affectionate nod to both Fridge and Pram... its dreamily reflective tones are teasingly sculptured in a disarmingly fragile whittling” – The Sunday Experience on Rewilding single ‘High Desert’

Rewilding is the solo project of Philadelphia-based musician and producer Jake McFee (Connected View). Jake began making music with Charlie Fieger and Kyle Pieloch in 1999 in a band called Psychic Violence, influenced by artists like Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, Mazzy Star and The Velvet Underground. Psychic Violence broke up in 2000, then reconvened as Connected View in 2008 with a fresh range of diverse new influences, including Ennio Morricone, Stereolab, Broadcast, Boards of Canada, Lali Puna, Pram, Piero Umiliani, Can and Cluster. Jake started Rewilding to creatively invest himself in a musical project in which he could assert sole control over the decision-making. Although his Connected View bandmates Charlie Fieger and Kyle Pieloch both play on the self-titled debut, released by Hidden Shoal in 2017, all of the composition, production, editing and mixing was done by Jake. Rain Patch is Rewilding’s second album, released by Hidden Shoal in 2020.

This music is available for licensing. Email Cam at Hidden Shoal for more details: cam[@]hiddenshoal.com | www.hiddenshoal.com/licensing