steve seel / naive songs
lavalier update
posted 4-24-24
Thanks to all who came to the White Squirrel for the gig back in March! Todd and I truly enjoyed the support. It was a bit rough-hewn but we did it. In other news ...
Nobody's more surprised than I am that the Lavalier record is actually coming along nicely – and also that it's ending up quite a bit more ... rawk than I originally expected. Quite the latent eruption of my younger musical self. I suppose this is the result of having wrestled some pretty big songwriting demons to the ground after, uh, multiple decades? E-fucking-gads.
The tune posted below ("Caught at the Well") remains the only completed track, however, so nothing new to share at the moment, but hang tight. Soon, though, I'll be ready to share Embarrassing Things.
-- ss.
lavalier
genre
oh, who knows /
"singing" / also, more loops
years active
active?
website
sure, when there's a finished album
After many years of making purely instrumental music, I'm returning to writing songs with lyrics and singing them. The track posted here is an example of where this appears to be headed.
A full Lavalier record is being assembled, and I think it will be a mix of traditional songs and ambient pieces.
Thanks for listening.
dismantlists
genre
electronic / solo guitar /
instrumental / ambient
years active
2017-present
website
Pilgrims is the most recent album from Dismantlists, released in 2020.
Dismantlists is music about memory and decay, but also comfort and hope. It began as a liberation - from singing. I had been attempting to write and perform traditional songs since my mid-20s, but in 2003, I abruptly aborted all my singing and songwriting because the process was not proving salutary to my overall mental health, shall we say. Anyway, one day my buddy Reg said, "why don't you try taking your voice out of it and see what happens," so I recorded a simple guitar instrumental and I realized that it was a language I had always "thought in" anyway.
The two full-length Dismantlists releases are on all the major streaming platforms, and the full catalog of tracks live on the Bandcamp page. The earliest material borders on headache-inducing, because I had no idea how to mix. Well, I still don't, but this latest record at least sounds acceptable.
Thanks for listening to it and for supporting the music.
steve seel
is a musician from Minneapolis, Minnesota. His current projects consist of Dismantlists and Lavalier.
Wait, I thought this guy was a DJ.
Yes, Steve is also a longtime public radio host, currently working at Classical Minnesota Public Radio.
Does he release any music under his own name?
No, that's another guy.
Why is this site called Naive Songs?
It's a descriptor of Steve's approach to making sounds because he doesn't have any formal musical training, and it's also an allusion to the fact that he is, often, not terribly self-aware.
So what about his radio stuff? Is that worth investigating at all?
Why yes. There are two nationally syndicated shows in particular you might like: Extra Eclectic, which is about contemporary classical, and Symphony Cast. There's also this, which was a lot of fun, and this was pretty cool too.
