From Noisy Ghost PR:

“Joseph Sant is a musician living in Brooklyn, NY, hailing originally from Seattle, WA. As a songwriter he connects the intimate to larger social currents, prophesying love against the backdrop of doom. He composes with lush, mountainous textures, angular shapes, the noise of braking train cars, and the encroaching sea. His first EP, Sea White Salt, self-released in 2016, earned a raft of positive reviews by underground music writers.

“On [his] Before Calamity [EP], Sant explores encounters with loss — avoiding loss, being bombarded by the threat of it, cherishing what we have before it arrives, taking its blows when it does, and in its aftermath, searching for salvage.

“This is a special set of songs for Sant and this group of musicians, because they are the last that they worked on together with their friend, Stirling Krusing, before he passed away.

“Krusing contributed lap steel and pedal steel compositions that he prepared for the record… But while work on Before Calamity was underway, he became gravely ill with a sudden cancer diagnosis. After finishing most of the EP with Sant, Krusing lost his ability to hold a guitar pick, then to play music altogether, and then his ability to speak.

“Though physically weakened by treatment and unable to verbally communicate, his mind and his ears remained sharp enough that he insisted on joining Galvin, his lifelong friend, at Four Foot Studios in Brooklyn, to help complete mixes of Before Calamity before he passed away at the end of 2018.

“While Sant did not set out to make a record about losing a friend — the songs were written months earlier —  it has become imperative for him to lift up Krusing’s memory and his artistic voice with this release. To Sant, this EP feels to him as if a microphone were running on some of the last conversations he and Galvin had with their friend.”

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Price: US$5 (streaming and digital download)

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Portrait of Joseph Sant Courtesy of Photographer Jessica Lin