Guitarist Buck Curran’s new album The Long Distance is being released by Obsolete Recordings as a digital download, via streaming platforms on September 29, 2023 and on CD by Eiderdown Records in October. Though Curran is also a vocalist and Producer, in an unprecedented move, he also plays analog synthesizer, harmonium, and acoustic guitar on the new album.
The new music brings to mind soundtracks that have accompanied movies, like Werner Herzog’s use of Popol Vuh’s music to accompany his cinematic landscapes. This is Curran’s first major body of work composed for analog synthesizer. Other than the track “Prometheus” the entire album was created and recorded during an 18 hour period between the morning of March 24th and the first few hours of March 25th.
On the album, themes touch on Curran’s Scottish-Irish heritage (“May Morning”), his father, uncles, and other family members who served in the military during the Vietnam War (“Quang Tri Province & The Fall of Saigon”), the old neighborhood in Detroit where he grew up (“Hazel Park”), and memories of his grandmother Florence who passed away suddenly when he was entering his teens.
