Written, produced, and performed inside of a garden shed studio, Brad Peterson‘s upcoming Ellipsis Album is perhaps the purest definition of “indie record” imaginable. On the psychedelic, ebullient folk-rock of his latest single, “What the Open Heart Allows”, Peterson develops a dreamy landscape by deftly fusing synthetic instruments with organic ones. As a synth orchestra pervades the track, banjo and drums are included to create a compelling world all the singer-songwriter’s own.
On “What the Open Heart Allows”, Peterson says:
“This song was written and recorded in two days. The images had come to me in a dream (as is with many of my songs). It was a variation of my recurring celestial dreams, it had a very Jean-Pierre Jeunet cinematic look and storyline to it. It was a pleasant and enjoyable dream in which ‘openness’ tended to be the sublime theme and emotion. There were one or two people I passed while walking. I never saw their faces and wasn’t concerned or threatened by their shadowy figures as I climbed to the top of a bluff where I saw other characters in the distance who involved with some sort of festival.The twinkling lights looked like an abstract mirror of the stars above. Like the others [of this series of dreams], I had the power to magnify what I saw in a night-time sky. The colors were vivid blues and yellows. Time and scale seemed to fluctuate.
After I woke up, it was still fairly dark. I made coffee I went out to the garden shed to sketch out the lyrics, chords, and melody with my acoustic guitar and a notebook. It was mostly done within a few hours -after I tracked guitar, bass, drums, piano, and all the vocals, later that same day. On day two, I had been experimenting in my lab with various circuits and processes with my electric guitar for a lark. The opening sort-of sci-fi sound is actually my electric guitar feeding back; I chopped it up and altered the speed and oscillations for the effect. I added banjo and mixed the final version in about another hour.”