new album Camera Obscura out now >>> here
of a personal kind through impressions, dialogue, little ways, obscurity, and peculiar sorts of narratives
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Navigating a deconstructed world, stumbling through life …
Somewhere at the intersection between classic narrative songwriting, instrumental experimentation, and ambient expression, James Morse is an independent singer-songwriter, visual artist, and producer based in Atlanta, Ga. He began writing music from an early age and produced his first album, The Desert (2016), Justin Vernon-esque in a garage with just an SM-57 and mixing help from friend and fellow Michigan-based artist, Chris DuPont. Since then, he’s gone on to collaborate and produce three more full-length albums ranging from a DIY/lo-fi aesthetic to proper studio quality when he recorded with Damon Moon at Standard Electric Recorders for the album Young in 2018. His latest, Camera Obscura, is a luminous meditation on death and the meaning found on the other side of it. The record was self-produced with a patchwork of gear James has collected over the years which led to an archival of sounds, textures, and vintage colors supporting an intimate lyrical experience. Often thriving in the midst of limitations in time, money, or resources (frequently self-imposed), James is a creator at heart, and always seems to find a way to keep making things.
Born and raised in the South but with roots in the Northeast, James is conscious of a mythic, Southern, Gothic sensibility, hearkening through lyrical prose to a harrowing realist experience. Both the real and the imagined are part of James’s aesthetic vision whether through lush harmonies and instrumentation or the stark open space of contemplation, much like the fiction of Dostoevsky and O’Connor, or the architecture of Gaudí. His sound is often described as similar to Ben Howard, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, Youth Lagoon, Nick Drake, and Henry Jamison, and he’s shared the stage with up and coming Southeastern acts Zac Crook, Jacob Mallow, Zion Goins, Confreres, Tyler Key, Book Club, The Arcadian Wild, Betsy Phillips, Bea Troxel, Clayton Wyatt, and Big Brutus. Like these artists, James tries to let the work speak for itself as it expresses something deeply personal.
Support James and his art >>> https://www.patreon.com/ofmosaics
[ In the projects The Desert, Young, Corazón, Fiction Façade, and Camera Obscura, James crafts mosaics of sound. These collections of fragments orchestrate a movement of an individual person through different spaces or rooms.
The resulting art is akin to and draws influence from the work of artists such as Justin Vernon, Andrew Bird, Ben Howard, Sufjan Stevens, Maya Hawke, Patrick Watson, Leif Vollebekk, Nick Drake, Sameer Gadhia, Matt Corby, Kate Bush, Bo Rinehart, Josh Garrels, David Crowder, David Crosby, Jeff Buckley, Bob Dylan, David Kaufman, Bruce Hornsby, Kristian Matsson, Robin Pecknold, Matisyahu, Nico Muhly, Eric D. Johnson, Bradford Cox, James Blake, Tom Meikle, Stephan Moccio, John Cage, Ben Sollee, Tom Ashbrook, Felix Rösch, Nils Frohm, Thom Yorke, José González, Michael David Rosenberg, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Croce, Blake Mills, Benjamin Torrens, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, Matty Healy, Brett Dennen, Jónsi, Daniel and Lauren Goans, Henry Jamison, Mark Foster, Jack Steadman, Trevor Powers, Colyn Cameron, Sean Bryant, Imogen Heap, Kaoru Ishibashi, Jenn Wasner, Stevie Nicks, Florence Welch, Scott Hansen, Kristian Dunn, Jack Vanzet, Francis Starlite, John Paul Roney, Neil Foot, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, Gracie & Eliza Huffman, Ray LaMontagne, Mike MacDonald, Cooper Casale, Andrew Huang, Chris DuPont, Alanna Boudreau, Norah Jones, Regina Spektor, David Gardner, Luke Howard, Kelcey Ayer, Taylor Rice, Kendrick Lamar, Tyler Joseph & Josh Dunn, Alexi Murdoch, Antoni Gaudi, T.S. Eliot, Rabindranath Tagore, Claude Debussy, Jean Sibelius, Scott Joplin, Erroll Garner, Lubomyr Melnyk, Ludovico Einaudi, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, John Donne, Toni Morrison, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Flannery O’Connor, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Tyrus Wong, Eyvind Earle, M.C. Escher, Mark Tansey, Theaster Gates, Julie Mehretu, Arvo Pärt, Elias Marechal…
Like many of these individuals, James focuses on creating diverse instrumental and ambient textures beneath a rich, imaginative narrative. ]
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Praise for James:
‘James Morse takes his listener on a nostalgic journey through earthy indie folk rock textures on glowing single, ‘Children of the Sun’.
”I’m dreaming for these, these months to come, that they be brighter than the sun” croons James Morse’s pleasing throaty folk vocal alongside tranquil, atmospheric finger picking, immediately setting a warm and upbeat tone for what is to come. ‘Children of the Sun’ is a track which makes use of moments of minimalism before it builds into an organic and incredibly authentic folk rock band sound.
James Morse channels a huge sense of freedom and an intrinsic feeling of wonder and enthusiasm for life in ‘Children of the Sun’ which skips with a lively, carefree heartbeat, embracing intricately thought-out arrangements which are equally as earthy and grounded as they are nostalgic and dreamy. The perfect song to explore the secrets and joys of nature and a reminder to live in the moment and make beautiful memories to cherish. ‘
–Karla Harris, When the Horn Blows
“…an emerging Georgia artist with mythopoetic lyricism and a tone that stretches from melancholic to an energetic warmth … James shares the catacombs of his heart and mind with thoughtful listeners as they ponder his impressions of both sacred and secular subject matter and his striving to find a mosaic of unity among seemingly disparate fragments… truly a remarkable experience… “ -Ron Waters, Tenuous At Best Media
‘Invenire Te’ has “Quite the feeling of Nick Drake lashing out
the acoustics under a cloud free blue sky and the vocals have that
classic folk tone that you’d expect to uncover on dusty vinyl
collections.” –Mp3 hugger, blog
Young (2018) is “a beautifully produced album of spiritual
investigation and quiet triumph. The accompaniments are ghostly, yet
resolute and confident.” –Cooper Casale, writer, fan
“..James is not afraid to go out on a limb… He draws you out of yourself, into the world as he sees it, and then allows the beauty of that place to slowly emerge.. simultaneously earthy and particular to the humble realities of man’s existence at moments and also strikingly esoteric, otherworldly even … almost eternal it its outlook … has the staying power of a classic in the American songwriter tradition... and yet, it’s the use of silence and pause in his narratives that haunt the listener most acutely… ” -Shelley Rose, Franklin Gazette
‘Similar to “Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver and The Antlers to name a few.
“‘Make Us A Shelter’ has the
acoustic explosiveness of a Dodos classic”
“‘Nostalgia’ breaks its own psychedelic ground.” –Jack McConnell, fan
JAMES MORSE 