a_woolsey
absurd combination of the mundane and the sacred. I love the story telling and the bass of krgovich's vocals laid over the instrumentation. Favorite track: Bridget.
TheSlowMusicMovement
Dream teams don't always deliver, but TSMM faves Shabason, Krgovich & Sage have created something greater than the sum of their parts after convening at Sage's new Colorado barn studio. The talent & respect is palpable as Shabason & Sage playfully & succinctly weave new age noodles into oddball ethereal tapestries that elevate Krgovich's wry, twinkled eyed observations & reminiscences into an ambient sloth-pop masterpiece.
Joseph Shabason, Matthew Sage, and Nicholas Krgovich form a pretty perfect triangle, musically and geographically. Based out of Toronto, Colorado, and Vancouver respectively, the three convened at Sage’s converted barn studio at the foot of the Rockies to diagram their kindred ability to extract grandeur from the most passable of life’s daily details. On his own, saxophonist Joseph Shabason warps late 80s adult-contemporary and smooth jazz aesthetics into tidepools of fourth-worldly sound design that are infinitely more self-aware and emotionally honest than any of their distant reference points. M. Sage, in a parallel sense, blends his skills as an instrumentalist with synthesis and field recordings to create auditory reflections of the natural world that are as whimsical as they are profound. Sitting cozily between these two heartfelt experimentalists is singer Nicholas Krgovich, whose observational slice-of-life poetics paint a relatable face onto his collaborators’ calm expressionism, both guiding and highlighting its deep sense of affect. The resulting album, prosaically titled Shabason, Krgovich, Sage warmly invites sound artist Matthew Sage into the world of wry and melancholy micro-miracles that Shabason and Krgovich established on 2020’s Philadelphia, and 2022’s At Scaramouche.
Album opener “Gloria” is a perfectly balanced representation of the trio’s individual abilities. Sage’s slowed and watery zither bleeds in from the edges of the canvas, laying ground for breathy woodwinds and harmonica that pantomime a distant locomotive. Speaking directly to the sonics at play, Krgovich melodically narrates, “Penny, did you hear that train whistle? Theo, did you hear that owl hoo?”. Even from this first moment, the intimate dynamic is so palpable that the listener falls unwittingly into the backstory of Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. “After connecting with Nick and Jos through DMs since 2020, it felt like a fun experience awaited us as potential collaborators,” Sage recounts. “I had built my barn studio, and I think it looked appealing to them to make an adventure out of coming to the Wild West to make music with me.”
After spending the majority of a decade immersed in Chicago’s legacy of jazz and experimental electronic music, Matthew Sage moved back to his home state of Colorado to raise a child in a more casually agrarian atmosphere, and to work in the kind of setting that led to his 2023 album for RVNG, Paradise Crick. It was here at the cusp of the Rocky Mountains that the initial push of Shabason, Sage, Krgovich began, in person. Making sense of the trek, Shabason adds “I have realized that making music with people who live very far away is a real possibility. As long as we can get into one space together for a short amount of time, the collaborative magic that is needed to make a record is totally possible.”
The three artists’ fingerprints are equally visible across the album. There is soft textural detritus floating freely in the air, punctuated by glassy electric keys and rubberized basslines. The sparseness in the placement of all the elements leaves them subject to ghostly visitations from a whispery saxophone, and a gentle guitar that peers around the corners of Krgovich’s free-verse musings. The album’s midpoint “Don” passes overhead like pollen on the breeze, constantly drifting out and back across pockets of completely empty space. “Old Man Song” turns a rare B-side by Low into an even gentler end-of-life reflection that is sweetened by Krgovich’s falsetto during the track’s wordless chorus.
As nebulous as that may seem on paper, the hidden songcraft slowly surfaces over the course of each piece, exemplified by the closing track “Bridget”. There are plenty of other moments of the album that bear discernible rhythms below the fogline, but it’s here that they rise up into a full-on groove under Krgovich’s lyrical fourth wall breaks in which he details everything from Joseph’s studio habits to seeing “Cats” at the theater with his sister. Despite the song’s relative density and pop sensibility, a careful use of space still reigns supreme. On the eleven-minute “Raul”, Krgovich comes close to unintentionally codifying this approach as he sings “The container shrinks, and shrinks again, with every day, the relief that comes from not wanting more...” Truly, the most abundant virtue on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage is patience. The trio interacts without interrupting one another, contently waiting their turns, all locked onto the same distant point on the horizon yet unconcerned with when they might actually arrive.
The groundwork laid by Shabason & Krgovich on their previous joint offerings is omnipresent, but it’s amplified by the joy Sage must have felt shepherding them to his idyllic and intimate new homebase. Prior to meeting up with Sage, the pair’s music often dealt with the beauty of The Great Indoors, but their new host and collaborator has smartly refocused their lenses on the small wonders of wilder locales. Like magic, Shabason, Sage, and Krgovich have not just musically photographed their surroundings, they’ve managed to reproduce them exactly. The sharp open air, the quiet thrill of an escaped routine, the self-reflective thought-loops during a twilit moment at the edge of a field, all of it’s here on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. Through the trio’s skillful ease, the listener is there, too.
The musical partnership of Joseph Shabason and Nicholas Krgovich orbits around a shared center of earnestness, slice-of-life poeticism, and the subtle everyday banality that becomes beautiful, even absurd, under their slight redirection.
supported by 41 fans who also own “Shabason, Krgovich, Sage”
Great record. Is the superb essay, reproduced on this site, by Dr. Marianna Ritchey, included in this pressing? Or will we have to wait for the 25th anniversary deluxe pressing for that? Possibly waiting until after society crumbles and we're all left painfully, powerfully alone? A nice, trim, offset printing of the essay included with the lyric sheet would be my preference. Just asking questions here. Thank you may23rd2007
supported by 39 fans who also own “Shabason, Krgovich, Sage”
This album is honestly a big surprise as Joseph Shabason has been making non-funky ambient jazz for years now, but this is much closer (without sounding anything like) the funky-type of ambient-adjacent jazz of Sam Wilkes & Jacob Mann. Man, I love the earlier albums, but this could unseat those as my favorite Shabason album yet. Recommended listening! World of Echo
Buoyant vocals and a varied palette of synths work in perfect tandem to create gorgeous art-pop that's able to address big realities. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 2, 2019
The gorgeous and gripping new record from Anika Pyle features minimalist folk & pop songs that struggle to make sense of loss. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 21, 2021
supported by 37 fans who also own “Shabason, Krgovich, Sage”
a music garden; a garden that i can take anywhere, place it on my ears and enjoy its calming ambience. for nature-deprived folks (like me), it's awesome. wolftetsudo