Paracosm

We are pleased to announce the release of Washed Out’s Paracosm, the follow up to his critically-acclaimed debut album, Within and Without. The album will be available on CD, LP and digitally on August 12th in UK & Europe via Weird World and in North America on August 13th via Sub Pop. Paracosm was recorded by Ernest Greene with returning producer Ben Allen in Athens and Atlanta, Georgia. The music recorded by Ernest Greene as Washed Out has been nothing if not dreamy, but for his second full-length, he’s taken the idea of letting your mind wander to another state a huge leap further. On Paracosm, the Georgia-based musician explores the album’s namesake phenomenon, where people create detailed imaginary worlds. The concept has been used to describe fantasy lands like Tolkien’s Middle Earth and C.S. Lewis’ Narnia, and it’s at the heart of the 2004 documentary In The Realms Of The Unreal about outsider artist Henry Darger. The idea of escaping is all over Paracosm’s lyrics, and it’s also the main thrust behind the music, which finds Greene distancing himself from the modes and methods that informed Washed Out’s previous recordings. No, he hasn’t thrown away his computer or synths, but Greene made a conscious decision to expand his sonic palette, which resulted in the employment of more than 50 different instruments, the most significant of which turned out to be old keyboards like the Mellotron, Chamberlin, Novatron, and Optigan. Designed during the middle of last century and made up of pre-recorded sounds with individual notes sampled for each key of the chromatic scale (the flute sound in The Beatles’ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ is a well-known example of the Mellotron in action), these relics allowed Greene to use his sampling expertise while also offering the flexibility to explore new creative avenues. A paracosm is a psychological term for a spectacularly detailed imaginary world – think Tolkien’s Middle Earth or Westeros in George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books. This, the second record record from Georgia-based producer Ernest Greene under the Washed Out banner, is his attempt to create the aural equivalent, but instead of dwarves and elves think lazy beats, languid vocals and samples which sound culled from some heavenly all-night summer party. Beneath the electronica wooziness, Don’t Give Up hides a great chorus and an infectious drive; Weightless makes you feel like you’re exactly that, lush and dreamy; while closer All Over Now could soundtrack the scene in a hundred eighties movies where the hero rides across a strange dreamscape.