PREMIERE | Lily Taylor, "J&Js"

Lily Taylor in motion; photographed by Daven Martinez.

Artistic experimentations allow us to enter new dimensions that can feel both new and familiar. New frequencies of sounds and visuals can open up our consciousness to higher degrees of existence that tap into latent elements of understanding and knowledge from the infinite archives of our experiences and the psychic sections of intuition. These breakthrough in artistic approaches provide us, the listening/viewing audience, with new sentiments and sensations that enrapture the psyche and senses of self with feelings of both fascination and awe. Innovative art inherently operates on levels that are parallel to a kind of cryptic magic where the artist takes on the role of the magician presenting performances that cast a light on the feelings and phenomena that have never before been felt or witnessed in such a manner.

Ushering in a new avant-garde era is artist-educator-administrator Lily Taylor who announces the new album Amphora with the sensory soaring presentation of "J&Js". The Dallas-Fort Worth by way of Boston artist has evangelized new possibilities of vocal arts and more from 2014’s album The Ride, spotlighting local & global upstarts on the radio program Bandwidth TX and advocating for the advancement of the arts in the realms of education and the world at large. “J&Js” challenges what melodic deliveries can be in the amphitheatric vessels of ambient and chamber pop. Taylor taps into the threshold of meditative consciousnesses, where our wakened senses stay in communication with the oneirological orchestrations from dreams and visions.

Co-produced with Black Taffy and Alex Bhore, Lily Taylor introduces the mind smoke plumes of "J&Js" with visuals from Sean Miller that heighten the song's sabbatical retreat into the psychotropic ether of the sensational and surreal. The image of Lily flickers and morphs into the camera's frame that entertains the thin liminal space that lies at the demarcation point dividing the material from the immaterial. "J&Js" asks you to step into the zone, where instrumentation is subtly used in sparse tonal sustaining hums as Taylor's voice is at the center point that mirrors the expansive atmospheres of the horns and strings. Time and space seemingly dissolve into the windswept arrangement that is a study in harmonic understated compositions that are magnified in scope and scale. "J&Js" observes life in motion from the perspective of floating in the cosmos and watching narratives playing out on the earth that spins below as you hoover in space. Lily Taylor delivers the quintessential out-of-body experience that is brilliantly executed out through the clever craft of inspired and mesmerizing musical composition.

Lily Taylor shared the following thoughts on the song “J&Js”:

Using a looping pedal, keyboard and my voice, I created a sonic bed that I could draw out a melody. Improvising can capture something powerful, something that seems beyond your being, intertwined with internal music knowledge and experience. I can only hope for those moments when I can capture the idea into a physical song through this dream-realm process. Inspiration can be a tricky thing. I was interested in using my voice as a texture in the song as well as the lead vocal track, and thinking about my voice in extended ways, as storyteller and instrument.

Lily Taylor embodying visceral vessels of song and praxis; photographed by Daven Martinez.

I was inspired by the idea of a vessel as an object and as a metaphor. How artists channel and organize ideas, how we express and package them, how those ideas, sounds, and lines we create bend, morph, and sometimes break. I am the vessel, as well as the song. “J&Js” is part of a collection of 10 songs on the album, Amphora that releases this July, recorded in Oak Cliff at Elmwood Recording in collaboration with Donovan Jones a.k.a. Black Taffy and Alex Bhore. Music video by video artist and educator Sean Miller using Max/MSP/Jitter to create a complimentary visual experience to the song.

Lily Taylor’s new album Amphora will be available July 21.