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NEW MUSIC ALERT:: The Ah Shares New Track & Music Video For “The Factory Girl”

by Marina Yelensky…

“The Ah—solo project of composer and musician Jeremy Gustin (Rubblebucket, Okkervil River, Delicate Steve, Marc Ribot, Albert Hammond Jr, etc)—shared the second single from his forthcoming sophomore full-length Mere Husk. Following the lead single “Watermelon Tears,” which caught the attention of PASTE (“displaying the happy energy of life”), The New York Times (“a burst of comic relief”) and others,”The Factory Girl” features Gustin’s friend, Yuan Liu, on vocals, who also stars in the track’s accompanying music video.

On the song, Gustin explains, “‘The Factory Girl’ is based on a traditional Irish song I first heard Margaret Barry sing. When struck by the beauty of the melody and the phrasing, I challenged myself to see what I could do with it to completely change the vibe, but keep the integrity of the melody. As I decided to not have vocals here, the narrative of the original, of course, is lost. But my friend Yuan just happened to be over my place at the moment I was recording this and I asked her to improvise some dialogue, which she did brilliantly. This of course alters the original narrative but keeps the underlying theme of love intact.”

The release of Mere Husk will be celebrated in conjunction with Gustin’s forthcoming photography book Foundscapes (releasing with 11A Records) at Brooklyn NY’s Step Bone Cut on February 1st.  Mere Husk is available for preorder on Bandcamp (with a limited quantity of the album and book available as a bundle) and will be out January 31st via NNA Tapes.

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Cody DeFalco
Clandestine PR

Jeremy Gustin is a one-of-a-kind drummer who has toured and recorded with Rubblebucket, Okkervil River, David Byrne, Marc Ribot, Delicate Steve, and Albert Hammond Jr.. He has long been in demand for his ability to bring a touch of the unorthodox to highly structured and improvised musical settings alike, so it should come as no surprise that on his own solo project, The Ah, Gustin explores the outer boundaries ofhis imagination to the fullest.

The Ah‘s new album Mere Husk, the follow-up to 2017’s Common Bliss, sees Gustin once again crafting animal noises, water sounds, miscellaneous found audio, and his own playing into a harmonic language that straddles the line between his love of pop songcraft and his equally strong attraction to the abstract. Rather than employ gurgling fish tank bubbles and dolphin calls for their ambient properties alone, for example, Gustin bends them beyond recognition so that they mimic synths or serve the role of instrumental parts in an arrangement that falls together like a classic “song” — whether Gustin includes vocals or not. “I love songs and melody,” says Gustin. “As much as I like unusual stuff, I’m a song guy at heart.”

Gustin’s longtime passion for photography gives us a window into The Ah‘s animated sonic universe. Whether he is out touring or just walking home from the grocery store, his eye is constantly drawn to the interplay of color, texture, and shape calling out to him from surfaces the rest of us might pass by without so much as a glance. A typical Gustin photograph captures what he refers to as “Foundscapes”: for example, multiple layers of posters on a Tribeca wall stripped and frayed to form an unintended collage; chipping paint rendered in such three-dimensional detail that it seems to invite your fingers to run across its contours; delicate veins of copper rust slowly eroding on a dented expanse of bright blue.

In several respects, The Ah is Gustin’s musical answer to his visual Foundscapes. “When I’m writing music,” he explains, “I look at it as something akin to archeology. It’s not like ‘This specific thing happened to me so I want the music to sound a specific way.’ It’s more like I’m chiseling away until a shape emerges and it starts to seem like music. In a way, I let the music create itself. I don’t even see it as I’m creating so much as I’m just finding things. These materials are all around us all the time.”

As intuitive as Gustin’s process may be, Mere Husk expands dramatically on the vision introduced with Common Bliss. Though twirling from playful to solemn and back again, Gustin’s music is as easy to take in as watching the myriad shades of colorful marine life swimming through an aquarium.

Artwork

Preorder
https://nnatapes.bandcamp.com/album/mere-husk

Select Press
1. Pepper Pupil
2. The Factory Girl
3. Just Relief
4. Mere Husk
5. Watermelon Tears
6. Frozen Teeth
7. Songs My Mother Taught Me
8. You’re A Garden
9. Far Away
10. Smiling Lemon Tree
11. Herkimer Mohawk
12. The Berries

Select Press
“It’s as joyous as it is unsettling. Without any vocals, these assorted laughs are the only thing tethering ‘Watermelon Tears’ to humanity, displaying the happy energy of life in the midst of synthetic instrumentation”  –PASTE

“‘Watermelon Tears’ ambles along toward a burst of comic relief”  –The New York Times

“a fascinating collection of compositions that manage to feel simultaneously original and familiar” –Uproxx

“although Gustin can certainly conjure highly entertaining percussive sound effects with the best of them, he also possesses soul by the bucketful” –Tiny Mix Tapes

“Foundscapes” Book Release & “Mere Husk” Listening Party
Saturday February 1, 2020
Step Bone Cut
229 Cook St., Bushwick, NY 11206
8pm – Tickets

All information provided by Cody DeFalco of Clandestine PR.

FEATURE IMAGE: The Ah (aka Jeremy Gustin) photo by Jesse Harris.