Dogsblood, Wristwatch, Carrellee (album release), Educational Davis, Haunted Ones DJs
Crystal Corner Bar 1302 Williamson St., Madison, Wisconsin 53703
Doug Pray
A close-up of a backlighted singer.
Carrellee
Written by Carrellee during the isolation of the pandemic and a divorce, the songs on the November album Scale of Dreams are appropriately dark and moody, but also a set of synthpop gems. They already had a following before the album's official release thanks to the “Official Unofficial Synth Series,” demo videos which have racked up more than a million views on Facebook. And if the voice sounds familiar to Madison music fans, it's because Carrellee is a new project by singer-songwriter Sarah Pray. The album release party is a wall-to-wall banger also featuring sets by Dogsblood, Educational Davis, Wristwatch, and DJing by Haunted Ones.
media release: Carrellee released a video for 'Morning Sun' in October. The track is the first single taken from her forthcoming album Scale of Dreams out on November 18 (Negative Gain Productions.) Carrellee overlays delicately sensual vocals about divorce and desire over a wall of scorched synths and processed tapes. She had some help crafting her noir synth-pop sound from producer Brett Bullion (Low, Poliça.)
While writing new songs for this record, Carrellee started posting weekly demo videos, titled 'The Official Unofficial Synth Series' on social media amassing nearly one million streams on Facebook in 2021. 'Scale Of Dreams' conjures crushed artifacts of desire, with each instrument processed through crumpled and fried analog tape drawing inspiration from 80’s new wave icons Cocteau Twins and Kate Bush, as well as a wide variety of Italo disco and synthwave artists. The inspitation for 'Morning Sun' came to Carrellee in a dream during her divorce. In the morning she quickly transcribed it from her home studio, and shared the demo video on Facebook where it has received 379K views.
About Carrellee: Carrellee (aka Sarah Pray) grew up in a musical household in Wisconsin. Her dad taught her piano and by age five was learning jazz chords and music theory. She worked at recording studios in Madison and Minneapolis as an intern and then started creating her own music. She had a few releases under Sarah Pray and also has a folk duo album with her ex-husband Thomas Kivi performing as Kivi & Pray touring through Europe, and much of the US in the style of Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons. During the pandemic and divorce, she wanted to both experiment and return to her roots. “I am a big fan of female artists like Bjork, Angel Olsen, Fiona Apple, and PJ Harvey, who constantly evolve. I feel more in touch with myself more than ever since the divorce.” For her new sound Carrellee enlisted producer Brett Bullion (Low, Bad Bad Hats, Now, Now) to fine tune her songs.
About Negative Gain Productions: The label originally started in 1997 delivering classic industrial, EBM, darkwave, coldwave, post-punk, and goth music to the masses. In early 2011, Roger Jarvis (of KDC and HexRx) joined Micah Skaritka (of Cruciform Injection) to reboot the label. This reboot included rebranding, and restructuring of the stable of bands on the label. The first three bands on the reboot were: HexRx, Kevorkian Death Cycle, and Alter Der Ruine. Since then the label has released over 1200 songs, through 60 different bands and projects. Negative Gain's approach to label curation is to find music that is just south of Mass Market. Music that would appeal to fans of 80's and 90's electronic and post-punk, but has a sharper edge that might not be family room safe.
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