Dig into this week’s Saturday Alternative playlist. The Fitting Room album was Moonwalking into the Future by Fulton Lights.

With production beginning back in March of 2014, the new Fulton Lights album has been a long time coming. The band is the project of Baltimore’s Andrew Spencer Goldman, who describes these past four years as a whole chapter of his life, ending with him putting the finishing touches on the album the night before moving to another country with his wife, his baby and his dog. Moonwalking into the Future was well worth the wait.  Goldman creates a space where beauty and chaos collide, where at once we’re engulfed in a world of angular synths, punchy horn stabs and fat, gnarly guitar tones, while at the same time floating in spacey atmospheres and distant textures – keys and mallets, soulful melodies and deep grooves that won’t let go, like on the album’s ethereal title track.

When I asked him about the time spent on the album, he said “It is hard to know how much the 4-plus years spent on this was a kind of perverse and unobtainable perfectionism, and how much was just actually the healthy process of arriving at the sounds I wanted to make and putting in the time to figure out how to do it, from a technical/creative standpoint… The fact that I had a lot going on in my life, having a baby and all. is also part of that and always informing the music.”….. One things for certain – Goldman has crafted a sound that is uniquely Fulton Lights, and that’s something very few artists are able to accomplish these days.

Read Goldman’s full statement below.

It is hard to know how much the 4-plus years spent on this was a kind of perverse and unobtainable perfectionism, and how much was just actually the healthy process of arriving at the sounds I wanted to make and putting in the time to figure out how to do it, from a technical/creative standpoint. There is always a translation problem to one extent or another when you try to convey to other musicians or engineers the idea you have in your head. So you do the best to get what you are going for, but the rest, at least for Fulton Lights process, is in the editing, the mixing, the overdubs. And I just don’t think I could have made it sound the way it does had I opted to draw the line at any point before it was really really done. I was growing into the songs and the sounds. The fact that I had a lot going on in my life, having a baby and all, is also part of that and always informing the music.

As for the A. Spencer EP’s, in some ways one might be inclined to understand them as a vacation from all of that. I had found myself writing the kinds of songs that I had written before I started Fulton Lights in the mid-00’s. Folkier stuff, rock, less curveballs. And so for both of those EP’s there was just some songs, some people playing together in a room getting the recording done in a day or two, bing bang boom. Done. The antithesis of spending four years working on something, mostly alone. And also it let me step away from Fulton Lights for a minute to clear my head about it.

Both processes are valid and have their pros and cons. I couldn’t have done the Fulton Lights one like the A. Spencer ones, or vice versa.

 

–hour 1—

Violent – Grapetooth – Graptetooth

What Do You Want Me To Do – Bob Mould – Sunshine Rock

Bellarine – Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Hope Downs

Is It Real? – together PANGEA – Bulls and Roosters

Venus – Twist – Distancing

Value – All Get Out – No Bouquet

Sing to Me – Cumulus – Comfort World

Double Down – Slothrust

We Appreciate Power (feat. HANA) – Grimes

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas — The Beths

Partners in Motion – Wild Nothing – Indigo

Into the Fire – These New Puritans – Into the Fire

Love Supreme – Ron Gallo – Stardust Birthday Party

People-Vultures – King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Nonagon Infinity

–hour 2—

Every 1’s a Winner – Ty Segall

Tank Top – Starcrawler

What You Don’t Know – Matthew Dear – Bunny

He’s Got His Mothers Hips – John Grant – Love Is Magic

Landscape – Future Generations – Landscape

Ordinary Pleasure – Toro y Moi – Outer Peace

Yellow Bike – Pedro the Lion – Phoenix

Shark Smile – Big Thief – Capacity

Christmas Time Is Here – Khruangbin

The Long Mirror of Time – Daniel Romano – Finally Free

I’ll Be There – Michael Rault – It’s a New Day

Johnny – Basement Revolver – Heavy Eyes

Symmetry & Black Tar – Thomas Abban – A Sheik’s Legacy

Allentown – Manchester Orchestra & The Front Bottoms

–hour 3–

Here It Comes – Spiritualized

I Know What It’s Like – Jeff Tweedy – WARM

Lux Prima – Karen O & Danger Mouse

Forgive (feat. Washed Out) – Roosevelt – Young Romance

—-FITTING ROOM—-

Channel Changing with The Holy Ghost – Fulton Lights – Moonwalking into the Future

Ancient Honkytonk Medicines – Fulton Lights – Moonwalking into the Future

Moonwalking into the Future – Fulton Lights – Moonwalking into the Future

To Be – Foxwarren – Foxwarren

I Wonder – Mike Krol – Power Chords

Twenty Fourteen – Dwight James and the Royals