{"title":"Loma","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"don-t-shy-away","title":"Don't Shy Away","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn December 26th, 2018, Emily Cross received an excited email from a friend: Brian Eno was talking about her band on BBC radio. “At first I didn’t think it was real,” she admits. But then she heard a recording: Eno was praising \u003ci\u003eBlack Willow\u003c\/i\u003e from Loma’s self-titled debut. He said he’d had it on repeat.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the time, a second Loma album seemed unlikely. The band began as a serendipitous collaboration between Cross, the multi-talented musician and recording engineer Dan Duszynski, and Shearwater frontman Jonathan Meiburg, who wanted to play a supporting role after years at the microphone. They’d capped a grueling tour with a standout performance on a packed beach at Sub Pop’s SPF 30 festival, in which Cross leapt into the crowd, and then into the sea, while the band carried on from the stage—an emotional peak that also felt like a natural ending. “It was the biggest audience we’d ever had,” she says. “We thought, why not stop here?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFollowing the tour, Cross went to rural Mexico to work on visual art and a solo record, while Meiburg began a new Shearwater effort. But after a few months apart (and Eno’s encouraging words), the trio changed their minds and reconvened at Duszynski’s home in rural Texas, where they began to develop songs that would become Don’t Shy Away. Loma writes by consensus, and though Cross is always the singer, she, Duszynski and Meiburg often trade instruments. Meiburg compares their process to using an ouija board and says the songs revealed themselves slowly, over many months. “Each of us is a very strong flavour,” he says, “but in Loma, nobody wears the crown, so we have to trust each other—and we end up in places none of us would have gone on our own. I think we all wanted to experience that again.” The album that emerged is gently spectacular—a vivid work whose light touch belies its timely themes of solitude, impermanence, and finding light in deep darkness. Stuck \/ beneath \/ a rock, Cross begins, as if noticing her predicament for the first time. Then she adds: I begin to see \/ the beauty in it. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA series of guests contributed to the absorbing soundscapes of\u003ci\u003e Don’t Shy Away,\u003c\/i\u003e including touring members Emily Lee (piano, violin) and Matt Schuessler (bass), Flock of Dimes \/ Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner, and a surprisingly bass-heavy horn section. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd then there’s Brian Eno. Loma invited him to participate in the mantra-like \u003ci\u003eHoming\u003c\/i\u003e, which concludes the album and sent him stems to interact with in any way he liked. He never spoke directly with the band, but his completed mix arrived via e-mail late one night, without warning, and they gathered to listen in the converted bedroom Duszynski uses as a control room. “I was a little worried,” says Cross. “What if we didn’t like it?” But it was all they’d hoped for: minimal but enveloping, friendly but enigmatic, as much Loma as Eno—a perfect ending to an album about finding a new home inside an old one. I am somewhere that you know, Cross sings, above a chorus of her bandmates’ blended voices. I am right behind your eyes. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sub Pop","offers":[{"title":"Yellow | LP","offer_id":50448233234763,"sku":"1098496","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50448233627979,"sku":"1098495","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/b128ccc5-aaa2-4c4f-b41f-1810f2159961_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727088212"},{"product_id":"how-will-i-live-without-a-body","title":"How Will I Live Without a Body?","description":"\u003cp\u003eJanuary 2023, Dorset. Snow is piled at the door, icy roads are closed, and \u003cstrong\u003eEmily Cross\u003c\/strong\u003e is in a coffin. Not a setting typical for a rebirth. But for \u003cem\u003eLoma\u003c\/em\u003e, this is where they bring their band back from the brink.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e“It's like a demon enters the room, whenever we get together,” writer, singer and instrumentalist Cross says of the struggle to bring new Loma music into the world. Following the release of their 2020 second album \u003cem\u003eDon’t Shy Away\u003c\/em\u003e, Loma’s three members were cast around the globe and the band—not for the first time—entered a deep sleep.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMulti-instrumentalist and recording engineer \u003cstrong\u003eDan Duszynski\u003c\/strong\u003e remained in his studio in \u003cem\u003eDon’t Shy Away\u003c\/em\u003e’s central Texas heart, but Cross, a UK citizen, moved to Dorset, and writer and instrumentalist \u003cstrong\u003eJonathan Meiburg\u003c\/strong\u003e left the US for Germany to research a book. In the pandemic years, even being in the same room was impossible, and attempts to start a new record faltered.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe following winter, in an attempt to salvage the record and the band, Cross suggested they regroup in the UK, in the tiny stone house—once a coffin-maker’s workshop—where she works as an end-of-life doula. With minimal recording gear and few instruments, Loma turned two whitewashed rooms into a makeshift studio, using a padded coffin as a vocal booth. It was a turning point.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThey scrapped much of what they'd made, letting a new place set a new course. The one-lane roads, hedgerows and dark skies of Dorset gave the new songs an ineffable but unmistakable Englishness. The band used the ruin of a 12th-century chapel as a reverb chamber—surprising hillwalkers who peeked in to find them singing to no one—and the sounds of Cross’s chilly workshop wormed their way into the recording: a leaky pipe, a drummer’s brushes on a metal lampshade, the voices left on an ancient answering machine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhat emerged was \u003cem\u003eHow Will I Live Without A Body?\u003c\/em\u003e: a gorgeous, unique, and oddly comforting album about partnership, loss, regeneration, and fighting the feeling that we're all in this alone. Many of its songs have a feeling of restless motion; faceless characters drift through meetings and partings, tangling together and slipping away. “I Swallowed A Stone” is like a nightmare with a happy ending; “How It Starts” and “Broken Doorbell” reflect on the challenge (and necessity) of wrestling with agoraphobia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThough the record nods to the trio’s separate lives— a German percussion ensemble, a pair of Texan owls, and the surf at Chesil Beach make guest appearances—the core of Loma's sound remains intact: earthy, organic and deeply human, anchored by Cross's cool, clear voice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLoma’s previous album, \u003cem\u003eDon’t Shy Away\u003c\/em\u003e, was galvanized by the unexpected encouragement and contributions of \u003cstrong\u003eBrian Eno\u003c\/strong\u003e. This time, they found inspiration in another hero, \u003cstrong\u003eLaurie Anderson\u003c\/strong\u003e, who offered a chance to work with an AI trained on her entire body of work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMeiburg\u003c\/strong\u003e sent her a photo from his book-in-progress about the once and future life of Antarctica; Anderson’s AI responded with two haunting poems. “We used parts of them in a few songs,” he says. “And then \u003cstrong\u003eDan\u003c\/strong\u003e noticed that one of its lines, ‘How will I live without a body?’ would be a perfect name for the album, since we nearly lost sight of each other in the recording process.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn the end, Loma’s efforts to reconnect with one another are the album's central focus: what do you owe a shared past, when everyone and everything has changed? “Making this record tested us all,” says \u003cstrong\u003eDuszynski\u003c\/strong\u003e. “I think that feeling was alchemized through the music.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAlchemized, because \u003cem\u003eHow Will I Live Without A Body?\u003c\/em\u003e is by no means a stressed-out record: an undercurrent of deep calm runs through it. But maybe ‘relaxed’ isn’t the right word. It’s more like a feeling of relief, of making it through a tough journey together.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sub Pop","offers":[{"title":"Orange LP","offer_id":50449112727883,"sku":"2195313","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50449116332363,"sku":"2195314","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Loma_HWILWAB_600px_5b29e605_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727099261"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/collections\/loma.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}