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Last spring, Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson started to make a record that was like nothing they had made before - an ambient album that would be both a haven from a suddenly terrified world and a heartfelt musical dialogue between two men who have been friends and collaborators for over two decades. Refuge is an album of profound meditative beauty which offers the listener a much-needed sense of peace and renewal. But while it was recorded in 2020 it's roots go back much further - all the way to the start of their friendship and, beyond that, to the shared sounds and ethics of their childhoods. InchWhen the pandemic began, we realised we needed to make this record,Inch Devendra says. InchBut we've been talking about it for so long. It's kind of been 20 years in the making.Inch Devendra and Noah met on the night of Halloween, 1999. Noah lived on Castro Street, the epicentre of San Francisco's Halloween celebrations, so their first encounter was in costume. InchHe was wearing a skirt and I was dressed as Bjorn Borg,Inch Noah remembers. InchI wasn't sure if this was Halloween or just him and it was the same for me. His first impression was that I was a French drug dealer.Inch Having established that he was not, in fact, a French drug dealer, they became fast friends. Noah, whose production and mixing credits include Joanna Newsom and the Strokes, came on board as co-producer of Devendra's 2005 album Cripple Crow and they have been working together ever since. Devendra grew up in Venezuela while Noah, six years older, is a native of Nevada City, California. But as they got to know each other, they realised that they had a similar history in the New Age subculture of the 1980s a world of meditation, Eastern music, the Bhagavad Gita and The Whole Earth Catalog. Childhood memories were coloured by the aromas of health food stores and the sound of New Age labels like Wi
