The fine folks over at Aural States pointed me towards the warm, folk-tinged music of Small Sur, and I’ve been happily listening to it all evening. In fact, it’s fair to say that it has become my evening – pushing aside the English Summer to make room for visions of vast, American forests and skies. All I’m missing, really, is a campfire and the gentle hum of crickets… Here’s how the folks at Aural States describe the band:
Small Sur stands opposed to today’s quantity-over-quality stampede, in which the pursuit of fleeting Internet notoriety threatens creative continuity, growth, and a sustained sonic relationship that honors the listener as well as the creator. The band’s patient, near-obsessive exploration of warmth, depth, and space makes each offering an experience rich in sensory detail—quietly compelling listeners to turn their iPods off shuffle and allow the entire release to envelop them from start to finish. […]
Small Sur is the primary musical alias of Baltimore-based songwriter Bob Keal and current collaborators Austin Stahl and Andy Abelow. The project was born during the spring of 2005 in a friend’s Southern California bedroom, where Keal recorded the self-titled Small Sur EP shortly before relocating to the East Coast…