For Your Consideration
Friday, May 22, 2026
Mac Blackout - 2026 - Cycling Vol 2
Self Released – None
Cycling Volumes 1 and 2: multilayered electronic sequencing with wind improvisation
In the winter of 2026 I dusted off an old stationary bike to use as daily therapy for an injured knee. I soon saw the potential of turning these cycling exercises into high energy creative recording sessions. I built a wooden rack for synth modules, wired it to the handlebars and began. The project quickly became an obsession multitracking layers of synth sequences each morning, then recording improvised sax or flute later each evening during daily emotionally charged therapeutic practice routines of spontaneous composition. For each piece the initial layered synth tracks were recorded during a series of 5-6 minute rides, repeating 3-4 times, quickly composing additional interwoven sequences, intuitively manipulating frequencies while riding and multitracking.
Cycling is a document of the spontaneous artistic process and has been largely left raw and uncut to reflect process as art. Each piece was created with physical instruments and mixed spontaneously on a Tascam Model 12 without computer or DAW. The sustained dynamic energy, movement, and meditative qualities of each piece are largely due to this process in the spirit of constant forward movement, exhibiting the beauty of intuitive spontaneous creation, capturing fleeting moments of initial inspiration through presence, therapy, physical and mental, in the endless cycles of life.
Souled American - 2026 - Sanctions
Jealous Butcher Records – JB274
Souled American return after thirty years with a work of immediate relevance. Arriving just in time, with decency roundly mocked, as dissent spells career disaster and algorithms isolate us into units of convenience, Sanctions dares explore roots and traditions in both sound and consequence, revealing a band that has lost members but gained gravity. Acclaimed by Jeff Tweedy, The Jayhawks, John Darnielle, and Counting Crows, Souled American here elevate their unique style of ambient Americana into a life-altering experience full of feeling and drama, like some ink-stamped elegy fresh off the printing presses of Walt Whitman.
White Fence - 2026 - Orange
Drag City – DC978
Like a lightning strike that travels through time – is there a word for that? – White Fence are all of a sudden cracking in the hear-view mirror again. Orange hits like, visceral. White hot and cold, a zombie Rhinestone Dwight Twilley Cowboy – but with each Rickenbackin’ chime, the ticking of the clock jingle-jangles White Fence in fresh time. Ruthless!
Guitars sound and like a shower spray forth. Resolutely picked. Cold and soothing. Shellodic (the melody in a shell, duh!). Swivelin’ thru the jagged, jittery pop sounds of the 60s-00000s, the sharped focus of Orange’s rock sonics gives Tim Presley exactly what he needed the most: open space to sing into, and songs to sing. The rest is White Fence magik at its most dark, as Tim's restless free-allusivation trippifyingly transforms the cramped confines of heart wracked self-excoriation right before our eyes and ears! In pop songs.
On (the mixing) board with White Fence/on the (drum) kit with Tim is Ty Segall (also producer of For the Recently Found Innocent, the last solo White Fence album). Engineering tactics fully hand-in-glove with the White Fence intent, they produce a clean and uncrowded space to mount up all the rock ‘n balladry, their clean lines surrounded by an emphatic/unalterable (minimalist) frame. These are hits! All of ‘em gleaming with clean electricity, and white (sometimes black-and-blue-eyed) soul. Hard water and power held in stylish reserve: “Your Eyes,” “Given Up My Heart,” “Unread Books,” “Evaporating Love” number among the many highlights.
Tim’s lyric sets and chord progressions, with their perspectives, time codes and smash cuts, give up eleven fleeting glimpses from the other side of the 'Fence, each outfitted as foot-forward pop tunes for maximum rock ‘n roll. On the “title” tune, “I Came Close, Orange For Luck,” the lyrics’ dire implication, blurred sumptuously by Tim’s eerie falsetto, twist strands of dread into the sunshiny college rock, sharing sum space with old schoolboys, The Smiths, while straying, an outcast of its own kind. Or the Lennon vibes of "Unread Books," operating through carefully twisted Presley wires. Production polarities on point! Playing with genre throughout the album like a space-age Kinks, Tim’s natty wordplay splatters against the songs' rock-solid edifice, spilling an infinitum of cracked, shaggy realities, billowing, mirrored, sharded. When it all moves, you move, and that’s fun, so long as you savor the deep impact of a couplet from “I Wanted a Rolex”:
“It’s the ocean sized desire/Impossible to satisfy."
Tim offers this post-op 'as-per' for Orange:
“Love/loss, addiction/rehabilitation, and a good long look in the mirror (by way of a shop window reflection in San Francisco).
But also the absurdity of life..... I wanted to sing my little heart out. Sing life”
Orange is an unstill life; a bowlful of Tim’s latest conceptions for guitar band, grown larger through thoughts, feelings, SONGS and some keys and synth from Alice Sandhal (+ 2 drum cameos from the ever-righteous Dylan Hadley!). A trance-like chronology of consciousness, captured in opalescent diamond tightness and ice fidelity at Ty’s Harmonizer II studio. It’s a KILLER. White Fence is Orange on time this time!
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