Four Patch Snapdragons
Ned Milligan (feat. Lake Mary)
We Need Groceries
Ned Milligan (feat. M. Sage)

NED MILLIGAN
Real Fun

available for purchase on LP and digital here

limited to 300 LPs
mastered by Taylor Deupree
comes with a double-sided color insert

Real Fun is the first album in three years from Florabelle head Ned Milligan.

“Life with my son is real fun.

For this album, my efforts to make music that documents or evokes moments of grace and gratitude focused more tightly on our time together. In finding inspiration there, the music sometimes became busier, sometimes more pensive. It’s all reflective. There are moments here when you can literally hear us at play, but more often I’m trying to musically articulate the feeling of ‘I’m so glad we’re doing this, right now, together.’

A throughline of the compositional process (and, frankly, of my life) is also the passing of my parents—one suddenly, one slowly, both too early. The absence of their perspective and guidance informs my daily life and relationship with my son. This is unavoidably present in the music, to be sure, but its presence is also a kind of offering.

I realized early on that an album this personal actually required collaboration; M. Sage, Lake Mary, and Zander Raymond all agreeing to contribute really buoyed me. On top of that, track five is actually all andrew cs—an interludinal “postcard” from someone whose work I so admire.

Thanks for listening and I hope you hear the joy in this one.”

-NM

PRESS

“Wonderfully realized, reflective compositions by the always dependable Ned Milligan, who did some estimable works in field recordings years ago around porch chimes and weather that I’ve never forgotten. Real Fun swings in that same path, but world audio is here woven into simple, Americana-imbued minimal folk/drone pieces, like a Chuck Johnson record played three rooms over as raindrops hit shaped tin and drip into buckets on the way down. Conceptualized to capture both memories of his fatherhood and revisit those of his own relationships with his late father, it captures actual moments of quiet understanding and peace between generations in a way that feels like memory, how it drifts in and out on the milestones you set for yourselves, your bedrock of feelings, without the burden that life presses on all the parts in between.” - Heathen Disco

“Another supremely thoughtful and considered record on Florabelle, this time from the very man who leads the operation… It’s music that feels both communal and deeply personal, which made it all the more impactful on discovering that the passing of Milligan’s parents held a large influence on his compositional process… There’s experience and narrative embedded into these grooves that deserves to be taken as a whole. Sit with Real Fun a minute. Like the friendships it celebrates and the people it misses, it’s worthy of the time.” - World of Echo

“At its core, Real Fun is driven by a profound emotional duality: the everyday joy of raising his young son and the lingering grief of losing his own parents early in life. The resulting album is a moving sonic diary that radiates gratitude for fleeting, ordinary moments, serving as an intimate and lasting tribute to his family’s legacy…a fragile, deeply moving album that ultimately serves as a quiet monument to the natural, heartfelt bond between father and son.” - Loop (translated from Spanish)

“There’s a deeply reflective and personal vision of his world spun here, its moments, and his part and presence within them with his son… Much of this finds itself set to a backdrop of various field recordings also, emplacing and contextualising all these little personal moments into a wider environment…there is a pleasant calm and comfort in the familiar, even dull, rhythms of life.” - HearFeel