Windswept is Evan Shornstein’s return to solo work. The Hudson Valley-born, Los Angeles-based electronic music producer who goes by the stage name Photay has spent the last several years steeped in collaboration, and he brings a perspective informed by those collaborative experiences to his latest project. Since his first release 12 years ago, Photay has moved much like the wind, swaying freely through musical worlds with little regard for perceived boundaries of genre and style.
Having studied hand drumming and balafon in Guinea, Photay has long held a predilection for interesting rhythmic motifs. However, he also embraces a sense of spaciousness, which can be prominently heard in his 2021 Carlos Niño collaborative LP, An Offering. This oscillation between meditation and dance collide on Windswept. Photay frequently roots his albums with a conceptual point of view, presenting an evaluation of or proposition for a modern ethos. While a consistent line of thought is woven through each album, Windswept is his boldest effort yet.
Photay’s music is often concerned with contemporary anxieties and the quest to understand and exercise them. Onism (2017) refers to John Koenig’s neologism of the same name, which means “the frustration of being stuck in just one body that inhabits only one place at a time”. Identifying this modern pathology was a way of addressing the condition, and presumably, as the tenets of psychoanalysis suggest, by becoming aware of the pathogenic conflict, we begin to free ourselves from it.
Waking Hours (2020) was a call to slow down and create space in a world that resists quietude and stillness. Windswept is yet another proposition for engaging with a world in radical flux. Here, there is an ecstatic embrace of the winds in whatever form they take, from tranquility to devastating force. Instead of identifying a condition or proposing a reevaluation, Windswept finds joy in surrender.
Like much of his previous solo work, there is a tension between the abstract and the concrete. While Windswept has a conceptual mooring, one can sense that Photay would prefer you to dance than intellectualize. This is music to move to, and the liberatory qualities that it seeks can only be found through feeling, not thought. This is one of Photay’s most sonically rich and exploratory works yet, and the record’s charm and character are found in its sensuous tactility. The dynamic layering of synths and acoustic instruments and the swirling panoramic approach to the mix create the immersive and precarious phenomena felt on Windswept.
There is a firm sense of melodic and rhythmic structure in Photay’s music, which makes it all the more exciting when these structures are deconstructed. The album starts with “Forecast”, which feels like the proverbial calm before the storm. This is essentially an a cappella song sung through a harmonizing effect. Photay uses his vocals sparingly but effectively throughout the album. This is followed by “Global Wind Trade”, which features some of Windswept‘s most expansive arrangements.
The lead single, “Derecho”, is a winding downtempo exploration that finds Photay embracing elements of atonality and off-kilter rhythms. In this way, it is an appropriate initiation into the record. With the wind as his muse, there is a devoted submission to the unexpected. The final song, “Still Existing”, returns to the vocal motifs on “Forecast”. Like Dorothy, carried off by the cyclone, we find ourselves where we started, uncertain if the storm was ever anywhere but within.
While you may hear this record in passing while ordering a flat white from your local specialty coffee shop or leafing through crates of vinyl records at a vintage store, it is more than music for (insert activity). An emotional and intellectual curiosity pulses through the glitches, polyrhythms, and floating synths. Despite the elemental focus on Windswept, it still feels distinctly personal. There is a compassion for the listener in Photay’s music that allows for a sense of trust, and it is through trust that we find joy in being windswept.