Album Notes

With a combination of stunning electronics, confident storytelling, and clever songwriting, The Qualia is prepared to redefine boundaries with the release of its first record, Nevada's Greatest! The musical project of Lars Casteen, a native of Charlottesville, VA, and collaborators, The Qualia pulls from a wide range of influences, from electro-industrial to krautrock and country, to create unique singable and danceable songs about the trials of finding oneself in the western world.

The music on Nevada's Greatest! features a compelling mixture of lush synthesizers, sequenced beats, and sparse guitars. Built for road trips, living rooms, and dancefloors, the music drifts from song to soundscape, evoking nostalgia, tension, and wry humor at once. Lyrically, the record includes a unique combination of fantastical western storytelling and reflections on current affairs, through topics bordering on personal, political, and sociological. The first single “Better”, is a complicated and twisted tail of love, betrayal and revenge. It blends the vocal delivery of REM, the lyrical style writings of Johnny Cash and the electronic prowess of the Postal Service meets Wolfsheim.