Slow Meadow - Costero (2017)

The Houston multi-instrumentalist Matt Kidd, who writes pastoral, deeply felt compositions as Slow Meadow, will release the 43-minute LP Costero on November 17. The 10-song effort is Kidd's second as Slow Meadow, arriving two years after the 33-year-old's debut celebrated by the New York Observer and Echoes' John Diliberto, among myriad others on the Hammock Music label. Tracked at Sonic Ranch (Beach House, Explosions in the Sky) on the border of Mexico and Texas, as well as a friend's home in northern Alabama, Costero is a spare and wistful collection of sketches for piano and string quartet, yet it's also immutably lush: One can hear in Kidd's soft focus motifs connections to contemporary minimalists such as Goldmund and Nils Frahm just as easily as the Romantic-era lions Satie and Chopin. Costero Spanish for "coastal," a nod to the collection's preoccupation with figurative boundaries will be released on vinyl and digitally, with one additional track. The French illustrator Jan Garet contributed original pieces for each of Costero's ten songs, and the record was mastered by James Plotkin.