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SOOPER RECORDS

Alicia Walter

I Am Alicia

    I Am Alicia, the debut LP from the former leader of Chicago-based art-rock outfit Oshwa, is a bold retelling of Walter’s self-discovery that encourages the listener’s own story to take root in its universal truths; a soundtrack to get you up and over life’s hurdles when feeling like you are your only cheerleader. Embracing influences spanning from jazz and the classic composition of American standards to hip-hop and new wave to build her own brand of eclecti-pop, Walter paves a path toward actualization, acceptance and love that is fearless in its sound and lyrics.

    The accompanying arrangements utilize a kitchen sink approach to production, spanning the poles from electronic to orchestral and everything in between (like talk box and tap dancing!). Known for her “near-cosmic voice” (WIRED) and “stratosphere of songwriting all her own” (Consequence of Sound), Walter invites you on I Am Alicia into the most dynamic iteration of her world as she knows it. Inspired by a life on the move and born from a restless passion for creation, I Am Alicia is part practice in personal mythology, part call to “set yourself free” and join Walter on her odyssey.

    What developed in a time of intense change as she relocated from Chicago to New York City in 2016, where the only constant was the time spent with herself, the artist sees this 10-track collection as “a hero’s journey through the unconscious, driven by my desire to experience who it is I am, inside, and what it is I do in this life, outside.”

    TRACK LISTING

    Side A:
    1. Prelude
    2. House Of Yes
    3. Who Am I
    4. Suit Yourself
    5. Just A Little

    Side B:
    6. Standing At Your Doorstep
    7. I Feel You
    8. Talking To Myself
    9. A Toast
    10. I Am

    Jodi

    Blue Heron

      The Line of Best Fit once said, "Jodi has left us broken, bereft but in awe of a talent that can take a couple of seconds and make it your whole world." Jodi is the project of New Jersey-raised, Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Nick Levine, whose soft-spoken songs deliver a series of intimate world building moments capable of shattering a listener's temporal and emotional boundaries. It is a type of gentle yet deeply powerful songwriting for fans of artists like Jason Molina, Mount Eerie, Karen Dalton, Julie Doiron, and Duster. For Levine, Jodi is tentatively described as an alter-ego, a lens in which they can ask questions, push boundaries and step outside of their inner world.

      Debut full length Blue Heron captures Levine's continued search for meaning; a search where a couple of chance encounters with a bird “a great blue heron” taught them to embrace the fortuity of creative expression and surrender to its symbolism as a metaphor for understanding their own work. Levine encountered the blue heron first while writing the project, and a second time while recording it. In the first encounter, "It pulled me out of a spiral," they say.

      "Maybe you're not in the amount of control that you think and that's actually a good thing. There's so much life happening outside of your head and that's really grounding to remember." It was this initial chance encounter that urged Levine to get outside of their own head and breathe the bigger picture more deeply into their writing. Later, during their final days of recording those songs, Levine was visited by a second blue heron. For them, it was a sure sign.

      Committing fully to the symbolism, Levine had a large blue heron tattooed on their back and submerged themself in a freezing Chicago pond as a means to forever memorialize the Blue Heron as both the album cover and title. Marking the dedication to their art "with wings wide open, ready to take flight" it also signifies the power of music, nature and friendship. While Blue Heron claws at the strands of meaning, and tries to make sense of the world, it's a work that ultimately only finds closure in the complete surrender to forces greater than oneself. It embraces chance, coincidence, and fate with a sublime curiosity, ultimately finding meaning in the randomness of it all.

      TRACK LISTING

      Side A:

      1. Power
      2. Go Slowly
      3. Get Back
      4. Hawks
      5. Slug Night

      Side B:

      6. Buddy
      7. Softy
      8. Water
      9. River Rocks
      10. Blue Heron

      NNAMDI

      Brat

        During the past decade, the Chicago-based multiinstrumentalist and producer, NNAMDÏ, has quietly become one of the most prolific musicians of the modern era. Whether under his own name or one of the many bands he’s spent time in, either as a full-on member or merely a touring partner, there’s been an endless stream of music that NNAMDÏ has had his hands in. Pair that with the fact he co-owns his label, Sooper Records (KAINA, Sen Morimoto), and it’d be easy to wonder how he finds time to do anything other than make music.

        On BRAT, the follow-up to 2017’s critically acclaimed DROOL, NNAMDÏ removes the veil to show just how much effort and energy it takes to work at such a high level without any breaks. That process of finding a balance between NNAMDÏ the performer and Nnamdi Ogbonnaya the person is what fuels BRAT, an introspective record that’s still as dexterous and exciting as anything that’s come before, but is intimate and hushed, commanding a listener’s full attention from the very start. Like all things he’s done before, BRAT proves that genre classifications don’t really work here. BRAT is part hip-hop, part indie-rock, part gospel, and part West African music, and in NNAMDÏ’s hands, these seemingly disparate pieces fit together snuggly, as if there was never a question of their compatibility. NNAMDÏ wrote, performed, and recorded BRAT by himself. 

        TRACK LISTING

        1. Flowers To My
        2. Gimme Gimme
        3. Bullseye
        4. Everyone I Loved
        5. Wasted
        6. Glass Casket
        7. Perfect In My Mind Demons
        8. Semantics
        9. Price Went Up
        10. Really Don’t
        11. It’s OK
        12. Salut


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