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The City's Backyard
The City's Backyard with Matt Zako. A Podcast For New York City's Backyard or any city's backyard across the world! Covering Arts, Entertainment, music and the community!
The City's Backyard
The City's Backyard Ep 118 DREAM PHASES from Los Angeles checks in from the West Coast to chat about their new music and album called Phantom Idol!
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Matt Zako
L.A. neo-psych group, Dream Phases, share their new LP Phantom Idol on this episode.
On the album, Brandon Graham says, "Phantom Idol is our third full length album that was written and recorded between 2022-2023. It has by far the most collaborative writing of any of our albums so far, as Shane, Keveen and I co-wrote about half of the tracks on the album as opposed to writing the songs individually. We initially recorded demos for all of the songs, and some extra outtakes, and then we brought those to producers Matt Schuessler (Cat Power, Kurt Vile) and Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Beck, Dr. Dog). With Matt and Rob we re-recorded everything, refining tempos and espeically the tones of the instruments. We also had the pleasure of having several guests perform on the album including Jeff Schroeder (ex-Smashing Pumpkins, Dan Gee, Marc Agostini, and Omar Medina as well as having our part time band mates Anthony Marks and Pablo Orue, who have recorded on many of our songs over the years.
For the artwork we collaborated with Asuka Watanabe on the album cover and design and Scott Duffey (Toucan Tango) on all of the singles' art. The vinyl and digital release is coming out on Coconut Spaceship Records, while the tape will be released on Mutation Records. We are going to do an initial run of California and Nevada shows, with further dates later this year.
Like our previous album, 'New Distractions', this new album was very much conceived as a complete album as opposed to singles compiled together. Thematically the album deals with a good amount of self discovery and self reflection as well as personal relationships. It also continues our influence of living in Los Angeles, and our love of California in general with a healthy dose of escapism mixed in there. 'Phantom Idol' comes the closest to what we initially envisioned both sonically and performance wise, and we can't wait to share the record."
