Mount Desert Island is a collaboration between Bennett Kuhn, co-organizer of Astro Nautico and producer working under aliases including Kuhn, bc_, Billa Bronx, Felix Castenzio, etc., and Jesse Kohn, the storyteller, dream journalist, songwriter, and member of Santa Fe band Laughing Branches.
Kohn's nightmare-folk tale lyrics and naive-Baroque melodies collide with Kuhn's psychedelic, bass-heavy productions to make diverse and idiosyncratic pop music.
Initially recorded and produced eight years ago in a small house on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, “Paper Boat,” like all Mount Desert Island recordings to date, froze in its development for years due to a series of private catastrophes and fluorescences. Kohn and Kuhn were driven to increasingly physically distanced locations despite their enduring brother-love until last year, when Kuhn revisited draft recordings of Mount Desert Island and surprised Kohn with resurrected mixes as a birthday gift.
Today Astro Nautico begins releasing finalized Mount Desert Island music more than a decade after the project's beginning. Fortified by mixing from Sam O.B. in New York, the "Paper Boat" single is taken from Mount Desert Island's forthcoming full-length self-titled album, due next year on Astro Nautico. "Paper Boat" arrives through Atlantics X, a campaign to build an emergency microfund for Astro Nautico artists impacted by COVID-19 and its economic fallout (priority to BIPOC).
If each present moment is a seed for a future, then Mount Desert Island, for better or worse, was unwittingly planted to emerge in today's unfurling emergencies. May it give fruits bearing seeds containing life that nourishes life in days and nights to come.
credits
from Paper Boat,
released July 3, 2020
Written & produced by Jesse Kohn & Bennett Kuhn
Mastered by Sam O.B. in New York
Artwork by Bennett Kuhn
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