Album Notes

Earlwine has returned to the New York City area after a foray back to his home town of Austin, Texas. His music represents a cultural stew of American influences, spanning from deep blues traditions to country to hip-hop and ambient electronica. Though Earlwine's music defies easy categorization, a sense of gravitas and reckoning colors every song. Manifold stylistic influences bubbling up from the continuous wellspring of American musical idioms continue to influence his songwriting and production. After a stint in San Francisco playing drums, guitar, banjo and accordion with a series of bands, including "The Funkmobile" and "Sexfresh," Earlwine stopped back in Texas to record his album "Songs for the New Depression," an independently produced album characterized by gutbucket beats, found vintage electronics and the dirty, dirty blues, prompting comparisons to Beck, Tom Waits and even Dire Straits. This was released under Earlwine's Christian name "Ben Ratliff" and is also available on CD Baby. In New York, Earlwine played a series of gigs as his alter-ego "Ben Ratliff". He developed a more acoustic sound while playing local venues like Fez, Makor, Arlene's Grocery and other popular New York establishments. After recording the bulk of his second complete solo album "Low Frequency Hum," he returned to his home of Austin, Texas in 2007 to release it on aMerkin.com. With his new name came a new direction. While "Low Frequency Hum" shares a dystopic vision with "Depression," there is also an undercurrent of hopeful naivete. The Waitsian and slightly tounge-in-cheek "Dark Nacht" chronicles an empire of excess run by a secret cabal of power-hungry fools, while "When We Were Young" hearkens back to a more innocent time in the speaker's life. "Low Frequency Hum" portrays a world off its axis and a country that has lost its vision, but also holds a flame of hope for the common decency of individuals. It's a moody album, for sure -- a soundtrack for some troubled times, but not mired in cynicism.