ZANDER RAYMOND
Secrets From A Squirrel LP
available for purchase on LP and digital here
mastered by Taylor Deupree
limited to 300 LPs
comes with an 8-page color booklet
After a series of impressive collaborations and increasingly assured solo releases, multimedia artist Zander Raymond now shares his first LP, Secrets From A Squirrel. Inherent in these pieces is a true sense of exploration, playfulness, and intimacy, all of which come together in a quietly delightful manner.
As a neurodivergent person, Zander pursued a process here that was both personally challenging and artistically rewarding. Sounds that are often unpleasant to him--doing dishes in the sink, the din of the Chicago L--were intentionally used as compositional tools alongside his now-familiar elements of synthesis, chance, and melody. There’s an uncommonly beautiful tactility in the results, which can be found in the album’s first amoebic rustlings and continues to be felt in its final, bubbling notes. Certainly part of what makes Secrets From A Squirrel so successful is its flow from one piece to the next, but it also evokes a kind of circulatory system—and the title of one track, “You Could Almost Hear It Sighing,” is an apt description of the album as a whole.
Zander’s visual art exists on its own but complements his music in ways that only underscore the strengths of both. Layering and light; collage and repurposing; tonality and humor—no matter the medium, his work is searching and gently generous, like the smile of someone who really understands you. To honor this side of Zander’s practice, an 8-page full color booklet featuring his collages accompanies the album. Additionally, for those interested in a little more zhuzh, a small run of artist editions is available, with each LP containing a unique risograph print by Zander and handwritten liner notes.
PRESS
"[A] vulnerable offering, finding elegance and mirth in sounds they generally find unpleasant…foaming electronic textures are imbued with organic ambiance from processed field recordings, building a palette that splits the difference between the precarious warmth of possibility and the unsettled purpose of synthetic precision…this is music with sensitive expressions and a sense of humor, a reminder to search for delight, even in the most unexpected places." - Foxy Digitalis
“An exploration of a private universe that's charged with domestic intimacy. Found sound and field recordings interact with attenuated synth notes with a genuine fluidity, one part flowing into another as if the entire collection is one whole movement. Records such as this often sound diaristic, a series of ideas pressed together, but Secrets From A Squirrel plays more like a 'day in the life of', a personal treatise of sorts - the ambient shifts and pulses of Raymond's life.” - World of Echo
“Synth notes and field recordings that interact create fluidity, almost like they evoke a circulatory system or neurological link. The tracks paint one whole movement…” - Cosmic Lazers