Stephen Steinbrink - Utopia Teased - VINYL LP

In 2019, Stephen Steinbrink discovered a short YouTube video of a street magician who approaches a highschooler walking home in Barstow, California. InchHere, let me show you my idea,Inch he says, as he places a quarter on the kid's hand. The magician performs some relaxed flourishes, and the coin vanishes. In silence, the kid stares at his hand at the nothing where there once, indisputably, was something, until his wonder finds a single word InchCool.InchThe title of Disappearing Coin, the new album from Oakland songwriter Stephen Steinbrink, comes from this short clip. InchWhen I look at it now,Inch he says, InchI relate to the kid, who's obviously uneasy in his body, and going through the experience of being a teenager in the early 2000s growing up in a bleak desert town like I did. I also relate to the coin, an inanimate disc of possibility. And I relate to the magician, an absurd facilitator of sending what is tactile and concrete into the wispy conceptual realm.InchInchI've watched it probably a hundred times,Inch he says. InchIt cracked me up but also blew my mind open- the feeling of wonder I experienced watching this video became a guide as I navigated new ways of staying in the realm of what's both real and magical.InchAfter a decade of incessant recording and touring, Steinbrink's creative world felt strange and alien, and he felt compelled to reorient himself in relationship to songwriting by exploring artistic and spiritual worlds outside of music. Following the 2018 of the acclaimed Utopia Teased, Steinbrink completed an apprenticeship in the nearly-lost art of Stained Glass, becoming a glazier at a studio that over three years, fully restored the enormous 90-year-old windows in San Francisco's Grace Cathedral. He committed to his Buddhist study, beginning lay monastic training before the process was thwarted by the pandemic. He dove deeper into music

In 2020, Ira Glass' Pulitzer Prize-winning radio program This American Life commissioned ten pieces from composer Stephen Ulrich to convey the yearning, intrigue, and beauty of the show that has become the benchmark of modern oral storytelling. Unsettling and humorous, shadowy and optimistic, Ulrich's music weaves a melodic and textural foundation through many episodes of the iconic program. Ulrich, best known for his guitar noir trio Big Lazy as well scores to the HBO series Bored to Death and the Emmy-nominated documentary Art and Craft has made a career of composing music for picture. With a fluid economy and cinematic scale, Music from This American Life tells it's own tales in a distinctly American vernacular. Produced by Grammy-winning producer/engineer Dean Sharenow the album features pianist/producer Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman). Album Tracks 1. Earthly 2. Handheld 3. The Swell 4. Fellow Traveler 5. Surprise, Arizona 6. Rinse Cycle 7. Housebroken 8. If and When 9. Unpretty 10. Bookworm

Delicate Steve - This Is Steve [VINYL LP] Colored Vinyl, White date 01/27/2017