Voyage Album

Part of the Lately Kind of Yeah archive series.

Voyage marks a noticeable turning point in Lately Kind of Yeah’s discography. While there are echoes of the earlier highly thematic, lost video game OST vibes of Hutton’s Paradox and Sol Saga, there is a rich tapestry of complex sounds and surprising transitions here that Voyage an altogether more refined listening experience, particularly in my personal favorites “Artisans” and “Floodgate”. Voyage is primarily a rainy, sleepy-sounding affair, though “Tide Devourer” and “Mapmaker” bring some energy to break up the album and keep things interesting.

Words from the artist:

“I’ve been saying ever since 2008 that I have a music trilogy in the works, Voyage being the original first-parter in a long series of abandoned trilogies. The idea was to end the album with a pattern that the next album would begin on, but instead Voyage itself begins and ends with a clock ticking ad infinitum. Listening back now, I’m happy to hear how much I wanted to mesh electronic dance with ambient music and guitar, a fusion that I still work at a decade plus later, sometimes no less messier.

Dear friend Kat Trautmann contributed the artwork and two compositions (Avian and Artisans) for the album; her style was always vibrant and inspiring to me, as we traded songs every other day during the tail end of our adolescence. We had one full collaboration before this as The Air Castles that’s unfortunately missing from the web.”