{"title":"Stephen Becker","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"stephen-becker","title":"Stephen Becker - Nothing Sun Under the New","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eFor Stephen Becker, music is a stream of consciousness. Originally working as the Trees Take Ease moniker, the Brooklyn based artist is stepping out from under the branches and releasing music under his own name for the first time. It marks a shift, a new beginning, that initially started out as a casual bedroom project but quickly blossomed into something significant. This new chapter starts with EP \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eNothing Sun Under the New.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eEqual parts weird and sublime, Becker resides in a sonic universe that bends into a state of oblivion and relishes the fleeting moments. This uninhibited approach creates a kaleidoscope of textures where songs about frozen drinks and old teachers exist against a backdrop of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003epropulsive synths, screwy percussion and lo-fi guitar hooks. “I think there’s a lot of power in the right melody and the right chord progression and the right sonic environment and that to me has as much emotional weight as anything that I’m saying,” he says. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eAttending concerts as a teen with his Dad and playing in jazz band throughout high school led Becker to experiment with different improvised arts, rubbing shoulders with different genres and practises. This curiosity, along with his talents, secured him a place at Oberlin college in Ohio, studying guitar performance. There, Becker witnessed performances from the likes of Deerhoof, Frankie Cosmos, Yo Yo Ma and Fred Frith that inspired him to merge his skills as a jazz musician and guitar expert and dive into songwriting. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eThe transition led to “art songs” and “experimental folk music” that can still be felt in Becker’s output. “I got to a place in my studying that started to feel frustrating,” he explains. “I realised that I wanted to write songs and also embody all these other things that I was excited about, whether it was improv or contemporary classical music. I wanted to synthesise everything that I love.” With inspirations including the likes of Marilynne Robinson, Werner Herzog, Olivier Messiaen, Sibylle Baier and Nels Cline, the result is a glorious mish-mash of spontaneity, where songs flow more like free writing. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eBecker’s journey into music was unintentional, accidental even. While his parents are both doctors, Becker sees himself as taking after his artistic Grandparents. His Grandmother is a visual artist, watercolorist and painter, while his Grandfather built violins and collected all sorts of instruments, most of which now reside in Becker’s own closet. He never met his Grandfather in person but he finds solace in the family connection. “It’s funny when your immediate family doesn’t really do what you do or understand what you do but you feel this lineage of carrying on,” he explains. “Who knows if I’ll be that to some future generation in my family – the quirky instrument-collecting Grandpa.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eThis free-spirited, almost unconscious nature sees Becker create a playground of escapism, where snapshots of his life are exaggerated and fictionalised through an often ironic prism. He finds beauty in the in-between, where strange, abstract realms exist without the need for a clear narrative or rigid structure. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eNothing Sun Under the New\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eshines a spotlight on the beauty that can arise from a spur-of-the-moment mindset. By accessing this kind of process, Becker taps into something real and concrete, resonating through an introspective honesty.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e “I like to be freeform and fictional in my music, but my feeling is that within that abstraction lies a deeper truth, something more real than just the plain facts about me,” he says. “It’s a wash of sounds and lyrics, but the picture that it paints is ultimately more true and sincere than anything else.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"NNA Tapes","offers":[{"title":"Cassette (With Digital Download)","offer_id":45567674089695,"sku":"CS-NNA-131","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital Download (WAV)","offer_id":45567674024159,"sku":"","price":4.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital Download (320 MP3)","offer_id":45567674056927,"sku":null,"price":4.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0677\/9256\/8543\/files\/Stephen_Becker_Nothing_Sun_Under_the_New.jpg?v=1720877454"},{"product_id":"a-calm-that-shifts","title":"Stephen Becker - A Calm That Shifts","description":"\u003ciframe style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=4134655800\/size=small\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/artwork=none\/transparent=true\/\" seamless\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/stephenbecker.bandcamp.com\/album\/a-calm-that-shifts\"\u003eA Calm That Shifts by Stephen Becker\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eIt’s easy to become absorbed by the raw musicianship on display throughout \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eA Calm That Shifts\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e, Brooklyn singer-songwriter Stephen Becker’s debut full-length LP. Its psychedelic pop songs lean into hairpin turns in song structure, style, and emotional affect. Becker’s proficiency as a musician is breathtaking—he plays almost every instrument on the record—evidencing a formidable jazz pedigree and an appreciation for the technical prowess of progressive 2000s indie-rock units like Dirty Projectors, St. Vincent, and Grizzly Bear. It’s difficult to resist playing each of these tracks back to latch onto a musical throughline only caught after it was almost over: a bit of sinuous guitar and synth counterpoint, a pivot between a fractured groove and rhythmic malfunction, or a gorgeous Brian Wilson-reminiscent chord modulation.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eBut though Becker loves to push his own musicianship to its limit and revel in the element of surprise, he is most interested in smoothing over peaks and valleys—in “making complexity sound intuitive and digestible,” as he puts it. His vocals are muted and conversational, unifying these songs effortlessly. Sometimes he lapses into whispered, half-sketched narratives that recall heroes like Sibylle Baier and Elliott Smith; elsewhere, he spins sticky and enigmatic phrases out into cathartic mantras, channeling Thom Yorke or Björk’s high drama.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eRecorded over the course of three years with his childhood friend and producer Adam Hirsch, the record touches on, among so much else, the breakdown of communication between family members, the NYC-specific illusion of a better life lived upstate, a documentary about Elvis’ later years, and Werner Herzog’s essays on film theory. But perhaps its central preoccupation—most clearly explored on “Unspoken”—were childhood memories of being told to speak up by teachers and other adults, and how the concept of quietness factors into the way he lives his life as a near-thirty-year-old.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e“It was frustrating to be told to talk louder when I felt it was loud enough,” Becker recalls. “\u003cthe song=\"\"\u003e is about the impulse to move in the opposite direction and be even quieter, a meditation on how emotions and thoughts can be expressed without words, through actions alone.”\u003c\/the\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eBy point of contrast, other songs indict forms of metaphorical loudness. For instance, there is the “doomed population in a digital haze” projecting “holographic” selves—often, more successful versions of themselves. Becker grew up in Los Angeles, surrounded by the children of celebrities and aspiring artists striving to be famous or acting like they already were. On the hallucinatory acoustic ballad “Secondary Player,” Becker critiques the models of success he has gravitated towards as a working musician. One of the album’s most indelible couplets crops up here: “I used to have plans but now I just need some space\/Let me play bass.” \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eThere is a subtle affinity between Becker’s musical language and libretto on \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eA Calm That Shifts\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e that make the record feel like more than the sum of its parts, and a disarmingly earnest statement. The push and pull between extroversion and reticence in the music evokes Becker’s working model for a life well-lived: the attempt to preserve inner peace and represent one’s self honestly while fending off the myriad factors in the modern world which threaten to disrupt that balance.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"NNA Tapes","offers":[{"title":"Limited Edition Purple LP [w\/ download]","offer_id":45567680610527,"sku":"LP-NNA-144D2F","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"Black Vinyl LP [with digital download]","offer_id":45567680643295,"sku":"LP-NNA-144","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital Download (WAV)","offer_id":45567680708831,"sku":"","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital Download (320 MP3)","offer_id":45567680676063,"sku":"","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0677\/9256\/8543\/files\/Stephen_Becker_A_Calm_That_Shifts.jpg?v=1720877045"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.northern-spy.com\/collections\/stephen-becker.oembed","provider":"Northern Spy Label Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}