The 'Rishi' album pressed on high-quality 180 gram black vinyl. Full handwritten lyrics sheet inside. Cover art by Rohini Moradi, inside art by Roya Roknifard and Pele Sweeney.
Includes unlimited streaming of Rishi
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 2 days
edition of 400
Purchasable with gift card
$22USDor more
Super Limited Edition *Marigold* Splatter Vinyl
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Limited to 100 copies, the special marigold splatter vinyl is a keepsake that will sound and LOOK beautiful playing from start to finish. Full handwritten lyrics sheet inside. Cover art by Rohini Moradi, inside art by Roya Roknifard and Pele Sweeney.
Includes unlimited streaming of Rishi
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Sold Out
about
Named for my daughter whose life and death inspired the entire album, this song came to me nearly complete in the days after her miracle birth on February 18, 2018. An astrological reading in Rishikesh the year prior had inspired us to try for another child, but I hadn’t written anything musically related to the experience of our travels through India until she arrived. Suddenly that spiritual energy was in the room, dancing through the San Francisco apartment we called home, and it hasn’t left me. I wrote song after song, including ‘Letter to Rishikesh’ which bookends the record, in the two short months of her life. The days after her passing were spent in hopeless grief, trying to understand the how and why of losing a child. But there was no consolation for us in the physical realm - so we turned our ‘eyes’ to the spiritual: our cosmic connection with Rishi. We returned to India to deliver her ashes to the Ganges — and through our sleuthing there, we discovered her power and our part in her greater purpose. That’s where I wrote and demo’d the rest of the music on this record — in Rishikesh, Haridwar, Jaipur, and Pushkar. When I was finally strong enough to get back into a studio, this was the first song attempted. In its construction, Joe and Roberto and myself established a precedent for what the record as a whole would sound like: rich and heavenly in synths, saxophone, and rhythmic textures, but also thrifty, raw and real with plenty of samples from my original demos — a marriage of the sacred and profane, the yin and yang. There would be no shying away from the heaviness of this song; I had to fully embrace its emotional weight to deliver it. Just as Rishi is so much more than the infant we knew, this music is much more than the notes recorded within its measures.
lyrics
Rishi, send me down a Rishi
Send her from the skies
Rishi, come on baby Rishi,
Open my eyes
On a map I might’ve missed it
Never known that it existed!
But a verse in the hymn of a song
Was my first clue
That led to you
On a nap I might’ve kissed it
Got a taste of the mystic
When I woke,
a saffron air
was still there
with her sage perfume
In the room!
Rishi, send me down a Rishi
Send her from the skies
Rishi, come on baby Rishi
Open my eyes
Dogmatic crimes & convictions,
in nursery rhymes & pulp fictions,
they’re only passing phrases
through the hazes of our youth
(oh, sweet tooth!)
a monitor somewhere is beeping
with consciousness never sleeping...
we had all the answers,
but we gave them up to get the truth
(a little sleuth!)
Rishi, send me down a Rishi
Send her from the skies
Rishi, come on baby Rishi
Open my eyes
After a slew of jangle-pop records in the late ‘00s, the VA group get trippy on their first album in nearly a decade. Bandcamp Album of the Day Jul 29, 2019
