‘Viceroy’s Garden’ by Tatum Gale | New Album, ‘Pretty Green’
Today, songwriter/producer Tatum Gale shares ‘Viceroy’s Garden’, the newest single off his forthcoming debut album, ‘Pretty Green’ (due May 2023).
“Viceroy’s Garden” is a chillwave introspection on the knowledge inherent in nature and the answers we may find therein. This lush cut from ‘Pretty Green’ finds equilibrium between the outside and inside worlds; evergreen synths akin to Four Tet or Toro y Moi nestle alongside haptic percussion, field recordings, and soft vox á la Caribou or James Blake, crafting a sonic symmetry metaphoric of the balance between self and Earth.
The songs on ‘Pretty Green’, the debut record by songwriter-producer Tatum Gale, began as reactions: against self-destruction, against the musical landscape young artists create in, against the callous indifference of the world at large, and in some ways, against the self.
Yet it’s from this reductive headspace that ‘Pretty Green’ assumed its vibrant dance-pop shape, taking form as an uncompromising, synth-driven response to life’s myriad cruelties that finds joy in the fact there are still things worth fighting for. The album is a glass-half-full assessment of Gale’s desire to care for those closest to him, even as that desire clashes with his personal shortcomings, both as an individual and as an artist.
“’Pretty Green’ as a title is meant as an expression of hope that the Earth can, in fact, be saved, and that you must carve out your own ways to support yourself and those you love”, Gale says. “But it’s also an acknowledgment of the artist’s relative helplessness—especially when you’re just starting out”.
In line with ‘Pretty Green’s’ introspective qualities, Gale gave himself the space necessary to examine and reflect on both himself and his music, a process that began in an appropriately contemplative setting. Armed with just a defective Casio and the human voice, he began writing ‘Pretty Green’s’ tracks during the Summer of 2020 in the guest bedroom of his partner and collaborator Laura Jinn’s childhood Cincinnati home.
From there, the work continued in Brooklyn, gradually metamorphizing from feverish, forthright demos into a maximalist lifework of indie synth—and similarly moving beyond its baseline Cincinnati Casio into warm Rhodes tones (recorded in NYC), as well as recordings of Gale’s performance on the piano in his childhood home in Portland, Maine.
Graced by collaborators like Laura Jinn (‘Poison Darty’) and building around the basslines of Wyatt Shapiro (‘This is starting to feel good again’), as well as the drums of Jackson Price (‘Your Day’, ‘Chickadee Eye’, ‘800m’) and the barn-burning sax of Dexter Moorse (‘800m’), ‘Pretty Green’ runs the gambit of electronic subgenera, incorporating found sounds, big beats, and satisfactory grooves in a coherent yet versatile package.
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‘Poison Darty’ by Tatum Gale | New Album, ‘Pretty Green’
