Art by Zack Rose

An artist from Oklahoma who draws eyeballs, teeth, and eyeballs with teeth (among other things).

[drawnbyzack]

psa

In light of the recent policy changes, I’m gonna be disappearing from Tumblr, for the most part. Lost Channel Echoes will still update from time to time, at least until I can find a new home for it. This blog, plus my personal, will remain up as archives, but I won’t be using them much, if at all.

So. Right now you can find me on Twitter, as well as Pillowfort (still under construction atm). I’m most active on Twitter. I’ll add additional apps/sites you can find me on later.

[lostchannelechoes]

Light Powered // Deastro

A short and sweet instrumental track, joyous and bouncing. No vocals, but it doesn’t need it: the brightness and light within its tightly packed two and a half minutes propels you along without any voices. It’s one of the few songs I wish was longer, stretched out for as long as the sun hangs in the sky, but perhaps it’s best that it’s brief. Even the best things can overstay their welcome.

[drawnbyzack]

a little while back, some kind internet strangers bought me and my fiance a couple of things off of our wedding registry. So, I drew this lil band of salsa friends to go with the thank-you cards we sent out.

(I still have loads of spare prints of these, if you’d like to purchase one. dm me if you’re interested.)

[drawnbyzack]

a quick spooky thing, pulled from the sketchbook and barely polished

[drawnbyzack]

a piece I put on Patreon like a week ago and forgot to upload here. never quite knowing what you look like because of dysphoria is a helluva thing

[drawnbyzack]

patron request that took me way too long to complete. they asked me to draw some mountains, and I took the opportunity to experiment with a limited palette while dipping my toes into a more painterly style that I haven’t used in a long time. 

[drawnbyzack]

whoops, haven’t been around these parts for a bit. mental illness stuff knocked me on my ass for a good chunk of the summer, but I’m doing better and I’m back in class, so I’ll probably be more active.

anyway! commission for @shadnoise I did about a week ago that was loads of fun

[lostchannelechoes]

Yellow Wings // Keepaway

This one has always sparked the fires of wanderlust in me, usually kept banked and cooled out of necessity. Part of it is the dreamy, almost echoing guitar and sampled backing vocals, their sound reverberating as if from a narrow canyon or valley, or out of some thin, gossamer portal. Another part of it is the lyrics themselves, speaking of a longing to be in two places at once, a desire to experience everything, everywhere, as much as possible.

And yet, there’s a sense of paralysis here, as well: the lyrics whisper part of the problem is nothing is true/and nothing has happened at all - the wanderlust thwarted, or held in suspension, anxiety and fear of the unknown ending the adventure before it’s even begun. And there’s a breathless moment where it seems the song might fade out before it’s really started, but it comes back in full force, bright and shining like the noon sun caught in glimmering golden feathers.

[lostchannelechoes]

DUSTY FRUIT // THE RUBY SUNS

For a brief time in the early 2010s, there was a trend of summery, vaguely tropical-flavored indie pop and rock. “Dusty Fruit” is probably one of the better examples of this mini-wave within indie music of the time: layered vocals over dreamlike instrumentals, bright and hazy and sounding the way sea air tastes.

I’ve yet to find a solid lead on what the lyrics are, exactly. There’s words, sure, and they’re probably English, but at the end of the day I’m not sure the content of the vocals matters so much here. They’re here for atmosphere, just like the instrumentals, language bubbling to a meaningless June-warm froth. The end result is like trying to recall a long-gone day at the beach: you may not remember what you said, exactly, but you remember who you were with, how you felt, how the salt of the ocean tasted on your lips, how the tide tugged at your body and how the ghost of it remained for hours afterwards.

[lostchannelechoes]

BUILDINGS AND MOUNTAINS // THE REPUBLIC TIGERS

So often the natural world and urban spaces are pitted against each other, both in terms of their visual formations, and the effect they have upon the mind and heart. Nature heals, the city wounds.

Here, cityscapes and mountain peaks are treated the same: neither as artificial, built constructs, but as inevitable natural formations. (Or is it the other way around?) Either way, they rise from the bend of the earth the same, unspooling on either side of some or any highway: blue with distance at first, then clearer and with more color as you drive nearer to them, and among them. Made different, one vastly older than the other, but they produce a similar effect, once you’re at their feet:

They make you feel inescapably small.

[lostchannelechoes]

SO FAR AROUND THE BEND // THE NATIONAL

The lyrics in this one are, perhaps, more tongue-in-cheek than the gently blue tone of the instrumentation and Matt Berninger’s soothing baritone would suggest. There’s allusions to food budgets so meager they could fit in a teacup, getting high and laughing while praying for Pavement to get back together, tied at the end with the refrain that there’s no leaving New York. It should be sad, but there’s a detachment that makes it all seem somewhat ironic, rather than tragic or merely boring.

Even so, there’s something distant and wistful about this song, almost melancholy: the sense that someone you care about deeply is slipping, quietly and inexorably, through your fingers. A question not of if the relationship will fade, like fog in the face of the sun, but when.

[lostchannelechoes]

BRIGHT ORANGE AIR // THE INLETS

An odd little mood piece of a song. I’ve never been precisely sure what the lyrics to this one are -a Google search only turned up a fragment, the entirety apparently lost or only found in the liner notes of the physical album. The most enlightening clue was in an old Stereogum post, which noted that it’s “an ode to the psychotropic effects of municipal lighting.”

Not what my first guess would’ve been, but I can see it. The relatively sparse, precise instrumentation and Sebastian Krueger’s distinct voice, together, bring to mind a cool autumn night, lit sodium yellow and amber orange by streetlights and bars and cafes. The sort of time and place where there’s more light bulbs than stars, glittering and blinking in a rigid net of darkened streets, rather than a formless, velvet sky.

[drawnbyzack]

two-character color commission for a friend, of his and his girlfriend's WoW characters posing for a photo (or whatever magical equivalent Azeroth has) 

[lostchannelechoes]

FOR REVEREND GREEN // ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

My relationship with Animal Collective’s work actually predates my stint with music blogs by a year or so; I first encountered them on MySpace, of all places. (Their page is still there, and seems to be updated regularly.) But I include them here because they were all over the music blogosphere, with every new album and EP, and their signature sort of strangeness primed me for some of the weirder finds I’d stumble across later.

And I suppose it’s not a wonder that this song in particular seemed to resonate so much with me when I was a teenager. Underneath the shivering instrumentals and Panda Bear’s high, straining vocals is a song about anxiety, simmering social unrest, and the disillusionment of adulthood. In Animal Collective’s hands, these seem… not necessarily less bad so much as more distant, made alien by music that, at the time, was like nothing I was familiar with -and still stands out from a landscape with no shortage of experimental pop.

[lostchannelechoes]

I GOT THE // LABI SIFFRE

This was one of the first tracks I heard on Said the Gramophone, back in early 2010. It ended up being a fantastic introduction to both music blogs and funk (a genre I previously had not had much exposure to): that slow, slinking bass line at the start, the impeccable guitar and Siffre’s honey-smooth vocals, bolstered by a perfectly used horns section. It’s a perfect blend of sex appeal and class, and all in the service of one of the sweetest and most genuine love songs I’ve heard.

Here, Siffre sings of finding a lover who lifts him up from interminable, constant blues - in the lyrics he describes himself as a downer and a lonely soul, who finds light and meaning with his sweetheart. And, really, isn’t that the dream? To find someone who helps you become a better version of yourself? It’s just not often we hear that dream set to a sunny brass chorus, or brought to life by Labi Siffre’s fantastic voice.

[drawnbyzack]

and hourly comics, part two! this was a pretty low-effort year, honestly. just been really busy @_@

[drawnbyzack]

this year's hourly comics, part one ✨✨