Immerse In This Brand New Track From Portland’s Intense Shoegaze Artist drowse

Just months after releasing his 2019 album Light Mirror, Portland’s Kyle Bates (as drowse) is back with more newly available music. Now, he has a split cassette release with AMULETS coming out on November 15 via Ohio’s Whited Sepulchre Records, and in the meantime, you can listen to a single off drowse’s side of that release below.

The song is called “Your Breath is Wind,” and here, Bates seems to dial into the immersive, atmospheric quality of his music even further. This element manifests via a slowly building, soft but substantive cacophony that by the end of the track feels like it’s entered almost if not entirely psychedelic territory. The song feels like a musical encapsulation of the experience of slowly but surely finding your mental basis unhinged from its moorings — it’s like floating along with river tides while knowing that they drop off somewhere in the near future and those rapids are only getting closer. “Your Breath is Wind” delivers captivatingly, carefully building and spinning intensity — so if you’d like to experience this, dive in.

Bates recorded “Your Breath is Wind” — which is entirely instrumental — at his Portland home during this past summer, while his other three tracks on this split initially came from his April 2018 NES artist residency in Iceland, from which he also drew songs for Light Mirror. Besides these two releases, Bates also featured recently on a collaborative album with Lane Shi Otayonii from Elizabeth Colour Wheel, an experimental heavy band who also released their own full-length album this year.

Check out “Your Breath is Wind” below. Click through to pre-order from Whited Sepulchre Records, who also has albums coming out soon including split tapes from Vicky Mettler and Lake Mary along with Suspirians and Trupa Trupa. There’s also a full-length coming from Lake Mary & The Ranch Family Band.

Photo via Matt Vrvilo