Kennebec - The Water Wheel (2025) [Hi-Res]

Portland-based composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Eric Phillips, known as Kennebec, is announcing his third full-length album, The Water Wheel, and releasing the new single "Listen." The Water Wheel is a concept album focusing on impermanence and the cyclical nature of life, inspired by Phillips' personal changes (falling in love) and his struggle with existential anxiety in an unstable world. Phillips created the album as a soothing and cathartic celebration of life, acknowledging constant change and renewal.

Musically, The Water Wheel is Phillips' most accomplished and eclectic work, drawing on global influences like Brazilian jazz, Japanese composition, cinematic chamber folk, and gospel. The album features experimental and instrumentally rich tracks such as "Hungry Soul Reprise" and "Hungry Soul," as well as a hip-hop/jazz fusion in "Moonlight and Shadow." The first single, "Listen," evolved from a guitar riff improvised over a James Brown break and is one of the first Kennebec tracks for which Phillips wrote the lyrics himself, exploring the tension between the beauty and fear of falling in love and the necessity of being open. The album features high-profile collaborators, including Yazz Ahmed and Miguel Atwood Ferguson, and Phillips' experience in scoring films (like Alexander Payne's The Holdovers) is evident in the lush orchestral arrangements and cinematic soundscapes. The Water Wheel is a record of acceptance of life's fleeting nature and the search for simple truths amidst ongoing global chaos.

Tracklist:
1. Kennebec - Hungry Soul
2. Kennebec - Neakahnie
3. Kennebec - ~Listen~
4. Kennebec - Transform
5. Kennebec - The First of the Salmonflies
6. Kennebec - The Water Wheel
7. Kennebec - Cycles
8. Kennebec - Moonlight & Shadow
9. Kennebec - Obstacles / Opportunities
10. Kennebec - Wind in the Night
11. Kennebec - Hungry Soul Reprise