Nowhere Flower

Nowhere Flower

Peace Channel

Soft Abuse

Nowhere Flower, Lila Jarzombek’s solo music project, returns with a highly anticipated third full-length, Peace Channel. This time around finding a befitting comrade in Soft Abuse, a label that has served as a welcoming home to over two decades worth of like-minded sonic travellers. Peace Channel offers a continuation and evolution of her homespun wanderings through the pursuit of minimal bedroom perfection. One key difference from past releases is the use of a Tascam 4-track as opposed to digital recording. The switch made for a freeing experience, with the tactile functionality of the machine creating more space for experimentation and discovery. Despite, or perhaps in spite of the learning curve of navigating the new gadget, which inevitably leads to problems, surprises, and many happy accidents along the way, the album comes across with the ease and flow of a seasoned practitioner.With this in mind, Jarzombek described the album’s process as feeling more akin to making a painting or collage. A feeling that comes across distinctly upon first listen, and one that’s most fitting given her artistic practice. The warbling and fluttering of UK or NZ DIY-style Casiotone electronics are met with rambling guitar lines and slurred vocalizations. Tracks like “Behind Glass” and “Hallowed Out” have a somehow epic-yet-quiet catchiness. Back-to-back gems “Shared or Shattered” and “Formed By Water” display the layered and building approach to 4-track aided improvisation. One of the album’s defining moments is the inclusion of the winding acoustic piece “Ur Picture;” a mesmerizing ode to Mope Grooves’...

Nowhere Flower

Heat Dome

Digital Regress

"Portland, OR musician and visual artist Lila Jarzombek has been in a groove over the past year. In 2024 she contributed searing guitar leads to The Spatulas' first couple of releases, including their exceptional LP Beehive Mind (Post Present Medium), and she also cooked up the first Nowhere Flower release of her potent solo recordings, Ruts the Place (Radical Documents). On HEAT DOME, her urgent new LP for Digital Regress, she embarks on a further excursion into her third ear across 14 transporting tracks. Throughout HEAT DOME, Lila leads us around a world of her own design, coaxing out rhythmic grooves and sweet melodies along the way. She employs a diverse patchwork of sounds while leaving space for an airy lightness. Bright and crisp guitar chords and fuzzy leads, swirling phased out synthesizer, fiddle, drum machines, keyboards, and melodica weave in between and around her unearthly and spellbinding vocals. She channels these sounds through slow-burning rockers like HEAT DOME and WHAT THE CREEK SAID and melancholic psych-folk ballads TORCHING IT ALL and GROUND CLOUD. HARMONICA is a cosmic bridge to side B, a windy portal that transports you to another realm. This album would be great company to 90s/00s “new weird” New England groups like Tower Recordings or Magik Markers with their wide-ranging interpretations of psych. And it embodies the spirit of punk like Japanese underground artists Onna or Michio Kadotani, or Columbus home-recording geniuses Jim Shepard or Tommy Jay. But like those singular artists, this music is authentic and...