Stereo Embers’ Album Premiere: Historian’s Distant Wells

Written by: Jen Dan

L.A.-based experimental rock music project Historian (AKA Chris Karman) delivers a moody and captivating album with Distant Wells. The artist revels in challenging his listeners to grow through the mysterious and colliding forces of his songs.

Karman is a heady expressionist whose solid, take-no-prisoners artistic vision is admirable and unusual. He doesn’t create ‘easy-listening’ compositions; instead, contrasting diametrically opposing sounds and tempos, restless alt-rock pacing clashes with slower, more reflective orchestral pop.

Distant Wells is a spooky journey into otherworldly rock layered with Bitches Brew-style jazz crescendos and melancholy Mellotron tone poems. Referencing the offbeat nature of the album’s panoramic production, Karman explains, “We attempted to defy expectations with this one. Lots of tape delayed trumpets and saxes as well as elegiac classical swells. The band put many disparate pieces together to sculpt out a meticulous and inimitable vision that truly coheres.”

The resulting recordings are sure to secure Historians place in the pantheon of highbrow psych-rock experimentalists alongside The National, Bon Iver, and Future Islands.

Distant Wells arrives September 14^th.