Lionel Williams (performing and creating as Vinyl Williams) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Over the past decade, he has released three full-length albums and several EPs of celestial psychedelic pop tinged with a pinch of shoegaze and a healthy dose of hypnotic kraut rhythms. The otherworldly music is always accompanied by equally transportive artwork and videos, which Williams himself creates. When we spoke briefly about how he connects the two worlds—the visual and the audible—he shared, “They’re interrelated in every fathomable way. They come from the same place, Alnilam [the center star of the constellation Orion, meaning ‘string of pearls’].”
Williams is currently working on a followup to last year’s brilliant LP Brunei. The record is set to be released sometime mid next year, but that doesn’t mean we have to wait for new music. In fact, he recently launched a Bandcamp-exclusive subscription service titled Astrocracy that delivers unreleased music and visuals (affectionately called V-Sides) to his subscribers every month. The artist describes the service as “a non-prophet subscription group where members can download all of the Vinyl Williams music catalog, as well as 3D assets from the celestial worlds I’ve created.” To celebrate the launch of Astrocracy, we explore some of Williams’s favorite Bandcamp artists. “Some of the artists are my closest friends who have influenced me heavily, and others make more avant-garde music that I regularly listen to when I’m working on videos or artwork,” he says. An eclectic, spiritual selection indeed
Si Istwa
Space Minus Distance
“Si Istwa appear as the fullest embodiment of extra-terrestrial music transposed into the human audio spectrum. Her only release Space Minus Distance came out on Flexible Records (imprint of Terrible Records) last year. It was pressed on flexi-vinyl, a pretty cool new medium, coming with extra artifact-ish mystical artwork made by the artist. Listen to this on a drive to Ojai, CA when you’re in one of those vehicles where the seats point in reverse out the back window.”
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June 2018
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