LA Priest, aka Sam Eastgate, received high praise for ‘It’s You’ before the release of his third studio album, Fase Luna and a taster: the dreamy, beautifully trance-inducing, “Star”.
Sam’s anthemic expression on what it feels like to be a ghost, his soft vocals and George Harrison-like guitar playfully interact to bring the vision of the spectre he sings of to life. “While I was living in Mexico nothing seemed real and it made me think of people I missed,” he recalls. “I walked on the streets at sunset and at night with a dog that I found there and made up this song.”
The track arrived alongside a trippy visualiser made by Sam himself, the body of his guitar reflecting the inner workings and sounds of his home studio. Watch the visualiser for “Star” here.
Variously known as Sam Dust, LA Priest and L.A. Priest, Eastgate has built a reputation as a subversive, unpredictable musician, consistently innovating over the course of his work with his now defunct breakout band Late Of The Pier, his cherished Soft Hair collaboration with Connan Mockasin as well as his solo work under LA Priest.
Following the release of GENE, Sam received requests to build drum machines around the world, with one correspondent from Belize eventually inviting him over to work at their studio. And so, at the beginning of 2021, Sam upped sticks to swap the Welsh borders for central America, only to find upon arrival in Mexico that he would be unable to actually get into Belize owing to travel restrictions. In that instant, what would become the third LA Priest album changed completely. Marooned by the beach in Puerto Morelos, Sam found inspiration from the sea.
From the gently warped guitars on super-chilled opener “On”, through to the slow and tender closing track “No More”, each song on Fase Luna weaves and undulates into the next, creating an immersive whole. Recording in Mexico and the rainforests of Costa Rica, Sam was struck by each area’s mythical history and ancient connections to the ocean, drawing heavily on both to pack Fase Luna with stories of spirits and imaginations of life on the ocean bed.
Without a synthesiser in sight, this is the purest LA Priest record yet. And with drums laid down by local musician Carlos Gabriel Favela Manzano in Mexico as Sam hummed the melodies, the closest the record gets to modern technology of any kind is the translation tool he used to write the Spanish lyrics of far out “fairy story”, “Sail On”. Raw and unfiltered, Fase Luna offers a one-way ticket to another world.
“I want to give people a feeling that they’re free when they listen to it, it’s not bringing you back to reality, it’s escapism.”
LA Priest plays the following UK & European dates this Autumn. Tickets on sale now:
Upcoming live dates
25th September – Paradiso (Small Hall), Amsterdam, NL
26th September – Berghain Kantine, Berlin, DE
27th September – Hebebühne, Hamburg, DE
29th September – Trix, Antwerp, BE
30th September – La Boule Noire, Paris, FR
2nd October – YES, Manchester, UK
3rd October – The Hug & Pint, Glasgow, UK
4th October – Headrow House, Leeds, UK
6th October – Corsica Studios, London, UK – SOLD OUT
7th October – Dareshack, Bristol, UK
Tickets
LA Priest also released his very own DIY chord generator through his official website. Based on and using the code that he made when he was 12, the generator played a key part in the making of the record which fans can today experience first-hand for themselves. “The chord generator is a quick way to break out of habits when coming up with song ideas on guitar or other polyphonic instruments,” Sam explains. “I made it so that I could write dozens of song ideas and think outside the box a bit, and it helped me write half the songs on my latest album.”
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Photograph by Matilda Hill-Jenkins.
