Fievel Is Glauque were a Stereogum Band To Watch in 2022, and their recent album Rong Weicknes is among the year’s most acclaimed. Long before Fievel Is Glauque started, Zach Phillips, one half of the duo, was well-established in the avant-garde underground. He’s made solo music, and he’s taken part in groups like Blanche Blanche Blanche, Grendel’s Mother, and Perfect Angels. Now, he’s getting ready to release his new solo album True Music on New Year’s Day.

Zach Phillips used to run the OSR Tapes label, and a press release claims that he’s “published 50+ solo and collaborative albums.” Phillips recorded True Music alone in his Brooklyn apartment over a few weeks, and he says he made it “using only a built-in laptop microphone and free recording software with no plug-ins.” He’s basically Soulja Boy. Here’s what Phillips says about the LP:

True Music was written and recorded inside a few weeks, very late at night in my Brooklyn NY apartment, using only a built-in laptop microphone and free recording software with no plug-ins. It formed as a restorative accident, raising me out of my sufferings (depressive anxiety, a broken knee, housing drama and associated healthcare difficulties). It’s the first “solo” album I’ve written since Feed A Pigeon, Breed A Rat (2021), which featured 20 guest singers/soloists.

Confused, forlorn, and 36, I reached out to music to document my huge, irrelevant, dangerous love, and to be saved in it. “Good enough” methods employed in less-than-ideal conditions revealed that far outside being located in a mind, I was in an environment, so I was finally able to make my first album as an adult. More than usual, I tried to limit the harmonic and lyrical material to what the songs told me was economically necessary, and it seems reasonable to read the junky and spare sonic profile of the album as a counterpoint to the carefully wrought Fievel Is Glauque studio album Rong Weicknes (released October 2024 on Fat Possum Records), the production and release of which took a lot out of me.

But True Music is also just representative of what I personally like best: writing every night, documenting the writing in “good enough” recordings right away, and moving on. I don’t have “demo-itis,” I have “demo-philia” (which coincidentally also literally means “love of the people,” and I do think songs are in some sense a kind of people): all musicians know from experience that representation is not neutral and that perfectionist production techniques can detract from the “aliveness” of immediate, “good enough” recordings. But I’ve already said too much, so I’ll stop here before drowning the music in my alibis. By the way, the Bandcamp and physical versions of the album come with 7 extra songs cut from the “official” album. Thank you for listening.

Opening track “True Music” is a spare, ruminative, vaguely jazzy solo-piano number, recorded with a whole lot of reverb on everything. Below, listen to the song and check out the LP’s tracklist.

TRACKLIST:
01 “True Music”
02 “It Made My Night”
03 “Tradewind”
04 “Try To Be Lonesome”
05 “I Care”
06 “Wind That Isn’t Air”
07 “Passing Fancy”
08 “Timeless Wonders Of The World”
09 “Pray To Be A Crow”
10 “Visitor”
11 “Good Stuff”
12 “Not I”
13 “Keep The Window Open”
14 “Room” [bonus]
15 “Pink Shadows” [bonus]
16 “Ponytails And Dragonflies” [bonus]
17 “People Act Strange” [bonus]
18 “Inlaws” [bonus]
19 “Fast Eddies” [bonus]
20 “Get To Be Sad” [bonus]

The self-released True Music is out 1/1.