Sedgewick
Chicago, Illinois, United States | Established. Jan 01, 2014
Music
Press
If you haven't heard the beautiful crooning tunes of local folk outfit Sedgewick, it's about time you did. With a dreamy, ethereal ambiance created by their music, the group has received various accolades, and have been working tirelessly to prepare their debut EP. Gardens, featuring four carefully crafted tunes, will be officially released this Saturday evening at one of Lakeview's unique venues, Throne Room. To create the evening as uniquely special, the group will give one complimentary copy of Gardens to the first 100 ticket purchasers.
The project of Sedgewick began in 2014, when Sam Brownson and Oliver Horton decided to collaborate and combine their affinities for delicate folk music. After spending time opening for various acts throughout the city, they are prepared to celebrate the craft this upcoming weekend.
Take a listen to their fresh EP, which features lush string accompaniments and a backdrop that will haunt your memory and make you long to return. With cinematic melodies and deliberate lyrics, all set amid gorgeous emotional undertones, this group will surely make its mark on Chicago's folk music scene, and beyond.
--Sarah Brooks - Gapers Block
Writing music inspired by personal relationships with a folksy, languid and introspective bent, local duo Sedgewick (like the street, but with an “e”) are poised to take the resurgent folk movement away from the punk hybrid dimensions many young bands are skewing toward in recent years. Making the rounds at local DIY events, with Oliver Horton on the stand-up bass and Sam Brownson on guitar, they simultaneously evoke Sufjan Stevens and a pre-therapy Peter Gabriel, with a sonorous harmony that mysticizes emotion.
-Michael Workman - Newcity
Discography
"Gardens" EP -- April 2015
Photos
Bio
Hear: a steady upright bass singing low—over the sounds of kids laughing and playing; soft, intricate vocal harmonies that melt together like cream; the hum of strings like a soft swarm of bees; a gratifying rhythmic shift. Take these elements (among others), add lyrics that feel almost-familiar, not because you’ve heard them but because you’ve felt them before, and you have Chicago-based folk group Sedgewick.
The multi-dimensional songs of Sedgewick's debut EP "Gardens" offer gentle arcs and motion (both moving forward and pulling back, in semblance to the tide) and call forth history, a bittersweet nostalgia (as if there is any other kind of nostalgia). Members sing of nostalgia that it is an act of “grasping at vines.” At times, the listener is situated in a park-like public space, or perhaps by a river. At other times, more organic sounds are infiltrated by the buzz of something mechanical like a heart monitor in a hospital, or the glitch of a subtle malfunction of one of the many devices on which most of our daily lives rely.
These tunes echo a circular trajectory, evoking present, past and future. This uncanny comfort doesn’t occur just because the artists who comprise Sedgewick have been making music together for many years now or because this music sounds like the craft of old friends—but because the many layers of each song guide listeners through an experience of time on a loop. And because this experience of time is, in fact, a reflection of life, there is joy and relief to be found in these songs, a kind of sonic sympathy.
It’s as though the young, talented musicians, artists who come from the west, east, and very center of this diverse country, are making some kind of map key together. Their directory speaks of the novice of walking, paving a new path beside an old road that is sometimes buckling, sometimes regrettably sturdy.
-Annie Pittman
Band Members
Links
