Before moving to Marfa, Texas and starting Soft Focus, Dustin Travis White racked up an impressive musical C.V. in Columbus, Ohio’s bars and basements. He fronted one expansive prog/psych/punk project called Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea and another called Moons, whose long-lost MySpace page included a song called “The Wizardry Will Not Be Televised.” He had a short but glorious tenure as the virtuoso sideman in TK Webb’s spaced-out Americana combo Sundown, which came to a close with either White deciding to move on (Webb’s story) or Webb suddenly going incommunicado (White’s story), ironically just months after I wrote a feature about how dedicated they both were to the project. (The original Sundown’s wonderful Mansion Burning EP has been wiped from the internet, but must-hears “Fog” and “Sleepy Song” are still online.) Before all that, White served as touring sound guru for Times New Viking, acting for a while as an off-stage sound manipulator a la Martin Swope in Mission Of Burma and earning himself a co-production credit on TNV’s Dancer Equired. Lately, he’s been touring with Light In The Attic Records as documented by Pitchfork TV.

All of that history is apparent in the grainy yet grandiose “Skating Rink,” White’s first single as Soft Focus. The song is culled from the project’s forthcoming debut 7-inch VCR Nomenclature, and it’s streaming below.

Soft Focus – “Skating Rink”

The VCR Nomenclature 7-inch is coming soon on a label to be specified.