Music on Tate Eskew

Top 35 Albums of 2025

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 17:26:15 +0000

Lucy Gooch – Desert Window Listen/Purchase
Desert Window sits somewhere between folk song and dream logic. Lucy Gooch’s layered vocals and soft electronics recall mid-era Björk and Kate Bush at their most exploratory, but scaled way down and turned inward. It’s quiet, patient music that opens up the longer you stay with it. Maybe my favorite album of the year.

Ron Heglin – Tom Djll – Duos for Voice and Runglers Listen/Purchase
A standout for me this year, Duos for Voice and Runglers feels like two signals meeting in fog, neither fully translating the other. Ron Heglin’s voice bends and mutates like a half-remembered language while Tom Djll’s runglers spark, stutter, and short-circuit around it. The result is a fragile truce between flesh and machine, hovering just long enough to leave a trace.

Friendship – Caveman Wakes Up Listen/Purchase
Caveman Wakes Up feels like sunlight hitting stone for the first time, followed by a sideways grin. Friendship writes songs that wander with intent, full of sharp observation, dry humor, and melodies that feel casually worn but carefully placed. It’s deeply smart music that pretends not to be, unfolding at its own unhurried pace.

Daniel Knox – Mercado 48 Listen/Purchase
Mercado 48 unfolds in hushed piano figures and a voice that sounds weary but steady. Daniel Knox writes with a rare clarity about isolation, doubt, and endurance, touching the human condition without grand statements or sentimentality. The restraint gives the songs their weight and staying power.

The Bats – Corner Coming Up Listen/Purchase
Corner Coming Up lands as another quiet affirmation from a band that has always trusted small gestures. The Bats sound completely at ease here, writing songs that feel modest on the surface but deeply assured underneath. For longtime listeners, it’s comforting without being nostalgic, proof that their instincts are still intact.

James McMurtry – The Black Dog and The Wandering Boy Listen/Purchase
The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy shows James McMurtry operating at full strength, sharp, unsentimental, and quietly funny in the way only truly smart writing can be. “Sons of the Second Sons” stands as one of the year’s best songs and one of the finest he has written, cutting deep while keeping its balance. The record carries that same mix of wit, moral clarity, and hard-earned perspective throughout.

Mike Majikowski – Invisible Listen/Purchase
Invisible centers on double bass, but it breathes and drifts like the best ambient music. Mike Majkowski lets tones emerge, recede, and blur at the edges, turning resonance and silence into equal partners. It’s deeply physical music that listens as much as it speaks, slow-moving and quietly absorbing.

Sean McCann – The Leopard Listen/Purchase
The Leopard is a meticulously constructed opera that dissolves narrative into sound, voice, and hallucinated detail. Sean McCann moves between radio play, ritual, and dream logic, letting scenes eat themselves and reform in slow, uncanny cycles. It’s immersive and disorienting work that rewards surrender more than interpretation.

Greet Death – Die In Love Listen/Purchase
Die In Love finds Greet Death settling into their weight, writing with more patience and intention than before. The songs feel sturdier and more self-aware, as if the band has learned how to stand inside the noise rather than push against it. Even so, the record suggests a horizon just beyond reach, making their growth feel both earned and unfinished.

Little Mazarn – Mustang Island Listen/Purchase
Mustang Island moves with a restless curiosity, its songs leaning into landscape and memory without ever settling into easy answers. Little Mazarn blends warm acoustic elements with unusual rhythmic and sonic shifts, creating music that feels lived-in and thoughtful. There’s a sense of wandering here, like watching light change over a place you think you know and realizing you only just arrived.

John Camp – Proceed Listen/Purchase
Proceed is precise and unpretentious, built from clean lines and patient movement. John Camp shapes sound with purpose, letting patterns emerge and shift without excess. His guitar playing is great as per usual and the result is music that feels both thoughtful and deliberate, rewarding close attention and lingering in the quiet between notes.

Aiko Takahashi – The Grass Harp Listen/Purchase
Small piano figures surface and disappear, never insisting on themselves. What Aiko Takahashi builds here is less about melody than attention, a slow tuning of the ear to touch, breath, and residue. The Grass Harp rewards patience by quietly changing how you listen, even after it ends.

Sally Anne Morgan – Second Circle The Horizon Listen/Purchase
Circling rather than advancing, the music moves like a body finding its own pace again. Sally Anne Morgan lets fiddle, banjo, and subtle textures trace slow arcs that feel shaped by weather, breath, and repetition. Second Circle The Horizon listens closely to cycles rather than moments, rewarding attention to how things return slightly changed.

Chrome Chasm – The Hermit Listen/Purchase
Long, patient passages stretch out and slowly shift, built from guitars, pedal steel, and soft brass that bleed into each other. Chrome Chasm favors atmosphere over momentum, letting pieces change almost imperceptibly. The Hermit works best when you stop looking for direction and let the sound settle in around you as if you were listening to the best of Philip Glass.

Mekons – Horror Listen/Purchase
Horror finds the long-running The Mekons doing what they’ve always done best: taking serious ideas and letting them breathe through rough-edged, restless music. Lyrics jump from historical reckoning to present-day malaise, and multiple voices shift the focus like a conversation that won’t settle for easy answers. The result is an album that’s both pointed and surprisingly warm, full of sharp critique and the band’s lived-in sense of collective strength, and it underlines why they’re still vital after all these decades.

Tropical Fuck Storm – Fairyland Codex Listen/Purchase
Fairyland Codex feels like a controlled delirium, raw edges and strange turns unfolding with brutal clarity. Tropical Fuck Storm blends noise, melody, satire, and bleak humor in ways that never feel accidental or sloppy. For a band that seems capable of anything, this record pushes their restless inventiveness into sharper focus without losing the off-kilter charm that makes them so amazing. They can do no wrong in my book.

Schatterau – Übers Jahr Listen/Purchase
Quiet, seasonal, and attentive, this record moves at a human pace. Schatterau works with field recordings, piano, and soft electronics in a way that feels observational rather than expressive, documenting time passing rather than dramatizing it. Übers Jahr rewards repeated listening, not through revelation, but through familiarity slowly deepening.

Pale Blue Eyes – New Place Listen/Purchase
Built with their own hands and clearly trusted, the songs settle in without strain. Pale Blue Eyes let guitars, synths, and steady rhythms lock together naturally, nothing overthought or undercut. New Place proves how rare it is to self-record and still sound this sure of yourself.

Chris Brokaw – Ghost Ship Listen/Purchase
Keeping up with my friend Chris Brokaw almost feels beside the point. He writes like someone taking notes while moving through the world, attentive and unsentimental. Ghost Ship drifts between memory and presence, songs arriving worn but intact, carrying the quiet authority of someone who has lived inside the questions long enough to stop explaining them.

Shiner – Believemeyou Listen/Purchase
The songs hit like well-placed turns in a familiar road, nothing wasted and nothing rushed. Shiner locks smart melodies into tightly wound structures, letting tension and release do the talking, just as they've done for decades now. Believeyoume sounds seasoned rather than softened, proof that precision and feeling do not cancel each other out.

Thor & Friends – Heathen Spirituals Listen/Purchase
Heathen Spirituals unfolds as three long instrumental movements that feel meditative yet charged, like ritual music pulled from a minimalist dream. The ensemble builds from simple marimba lines into layered sound worlds where cello drones, winds, and even a wordless choir give weight to every shift. Recorded live in an empty auditorium, the music moves slowly but insistently, a kind of spacious, hymn-like ambient work that suggests both quiet reflection and something approaching awe.

Lathe of Heaven – Aurora Listen/Purchase
This one hit me right away and stayed there because of the guitar lines and vocal melodies that many Flock of Seagulls fans will love. Lathe of Heaven has a real feel for mood and melody here, songs that glow and fray at the edges without losing their center. Aurora already feels strong and considered, and it also makes me excited to hear what happens when they tighten the screws just a bit more next time.

Ben McElroy – Elkwort Listen/Purchase
Elkwort feels less like a composed record and more like something overheard. Breath, bow scrape, and wheezing organ drift in and out, never settling long enough to become comfortable. There is a rural, almost medicinal quality to it, as if these sounds were gathered rather than written. It rewards patience, not with big moments, but with a sense of being quietly altered by the time it ends.

Eli Winter – A Trick Of The Light Listen/Purchase
This record is Eli Winter stepping fully into himself. The playing is open and generous, curious without showing off, and confident enough to let ideas breathe. It moves easily between folk, jazz, and abstraction, but always sounds grounded and human.

The Necks – Disquiet Listen/Purchase
Disquiet tests your patience and rewards it in equal measure. This is the record where The Necks unapologetically take up more than three hours of your life with slowly unfolding, improvisational terrain that feels alive and weathered at the same time. It’s hypnotic without being easy, mysterious without being opaque, and when it clicks it feels like you are breathing the same air as these three.

Jogging House – Kiosk Listen/Purchase
Kiosk is Jogging House in a slightly sunnier mood, where loopy tape fragments and hazy melodies feel personal and gentle rather than shadowy. The whole thing was built by chopping up tape loops and running them through a sampler and modular gear, then recording straight to tape in live takes, which gives it an unguarded, human energy.

The Ex – If Your Mirror Breaks Listen/Purchase
This one feels less like confrontation and more like communion. The Ex still clang and surge, but there’s a warmth under the abrasion, a sense of people listening hard to each other while the world rattles outside. The songs feel handmade and a little crooked, full of motion, humor, and unease. Strange music that somehow leaves you steadier than when you started.

Water Damage – Live At Le Guess Who? Listen/Purchase
This record is less like a performance and more like a condition you submit to. Water Damage lock into a single idea and refuse to blink, pushing repetition until it turns viscous and hallucinatory. Time stretches, details warp, and what starts as brute force slowly becomes meditative. Music as pressure system. Simple in the best way, smart in how long it holds.

Old Saw – The Wringing Cloth Listen/Purchase
The recording here from Old Saw feels quietly unsettled, like folk music remembering something it would rather not. Old Saw stretch familiar acoustic shapes until they thin out and blur, leaving space where certainty used to live. Nothing here rushes, nothing insists. It just hangs in the air, damp and unresolved, and somehow feels truer for it.

Michael Grigoni * Pan•American – New World, Lonely Ride Listen/Purchase
New World, Lonely Ride is a road trip at sunrise with no destination, just the hum of asphalt and the slow bloom of atmosphere around you. Michael Grigoni and Pan•American weave distant electronics, sparse guitar, and field recordings into something both expansive and intimate. It’s not beat-driven. It’s mood-driven, a study in space where silence counts as much as sound. A lonely ride that somehow feels like company when you need it.

Ancient Death – Ego Dissolution Listen/Purchase
Not a lot of metal on the list this year, but Ego Dissolution is a stand-out. The riffs and rhythms are steeped in tradition yet feel alive and unpredictable, like old school mechanics running through an cosmic filter. It's an album that sounds like it’s wrestling with its own shadow and winning.

Piers Faccini & Ballaké Sissoko – When The Word Was Song Listen/Purchase
This recording exemplifies music from before music was separated into styles. Voice, guitar, and kora move with an easy gravity, each note chosen, nothing wasted. It’s intimate without being fragile, ancient without feeling precious. Songs as shared memory, passed hand to hand, still warm when you receive them.

Cheer-Accident – Admission Listen/Purchase
Admission feels like a band that never lost the joy of surprise. Cheer-Accident twist and pivot with gleeful unpredictability, leaping from jagged art-rock hooks to jazz-tinged turns and oddball harmonies that land just when you think you know the road they’re on. It’s smart without being precious, strange without being alienating, and full of moments that make you both grin and scratch your head. An album that rewards curiosity and refuses to sit still. They've reached Thinking Plague status I think.

Seabuckthorn – A Path Within A Path Listen/Purchase
Do you want to listen for direction rather than following one? Put this in your headphones, then. Much like other Seabuckthorn records, the sounds arrive lightly, guitar, bowed strings, fragments of air and place, each leaving a trace before moving on. Nothing here insists on meaning, yet everything feels intentional. It’s music that trusts the listener to wander, to notice, and to find their own way through it.

tree // nature – Triple Heart Chamber and Dancing Mechanical Tree Listen/Purchase
Long drones stack, phase, and grind until repetition stops feeling passive and starts feeling structural, almost architectural. You can hear the mechanics working, oscillations nudging against each other, time stretching and folding in on itself. It’s visceral because of the volume and density, analytical because the process is always exposed. Music that doesn’t soothe so much as recalibrate your nervous system.

New album "A Day in Bon Aqua" released

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 19:47:03 +0000

What a day it was! A few bats emerged to fill the expedited spring twilight to eagerly dive-bomb unsuspecting insects that must be confused by the unanticipated elements. Adept at moves usually offered by barn swallows during late summer evenings as they dart about just above the field full of uncut hay seemingly tied to the tail of a kite. A bullfrog even spoke upâ€¦perhaps hoping to find some early romance or maybe even warn the other virile croakers in the area that this is his year. Let it be our year.

My new album, Semiotics, released today…

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:23:42 +0000

This has been a long time coming, but as of today my new album Semiotics comes out today on Function Equivalent Recordings. I’ve spent an immeasurable amount of time on this recording. It has been recorded in my home studio over the past few years as I have moved around. At times, I had no studio and I wasn’t able to work on the album at all. Other times, I was so full of ideas I couldn’t get them down quick enough. This is the object of that process.

New Project…The Peasant Revolt – Calling Out

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:09:36 +0000

About three and half years ago, I spoke with Caldwell, from The Bubblegum Complex, about doing a record together and it really never panned out as we got caught up with life. With my new record in the bag and set to be released this Autumn, I’ve been starting other projects with people and I thought now is as good a time as any to see if Caldwell wanted to ease back into doing some songs. Caldwell is recovering from surgery in Mississippi so we couldn’t really get together in my studio to record some new stuff, so what we did was started with an acoustic track that Caldwell had hastily recorded to get his idea down. He was having trouble writing a lyric and melody for the song…so I took a stab. In the end, I only ended up doing the vocal/lyric and adding a mellotron to the track that has a huge pre-delay reverb out to a delay. I cleaned up the track a little frequency-wise and here is what we have…our first attempt at collaboration. We plan on doing more of this and hopefully, once Caldwell has recovered, we’ll be able to write and record a whole noise-filled record together here in Nashville. For now, you’ll probably see tracks pop up here and there on this site.

Help Craig Schumacher of WaveLab Studios

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:50:24 +0000

Craig Schumacher is a wonderful engineer and needs some help. He is the owner/operator of WaveLab Studios in Tucson where, among many others, he has recorded; Neko Case, Calexico, DeVotchKa, Animal Collective, and Iron and Wine.

Earlier this year Craig was diagnosed with head and neck cancer. His doctors believe that with the proper treatments (which have already begun), he stands a good chance of beating this. The bad news is that the treatments are painful and costly. The out-of-pocket expenses will be enormous, not to mention the fact that there will be periods in which Craig will not be able to work.

Patrick Krief – Zero Art Session – Recorded Live to 2-track on May 3rd, 2007

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 15:30:36 +0000

A few years ago I had the pleasure of sitting in my studio with my friend, Patrick Krief, and recording the 4 songs below. He was in town performing with his band, The Dears, and we were able to get some time before the show to knock these recordings out. We recorded live to 2-track using a single microphone and ate some brownies after the session. Patrick is a passionate musician and I think it really comes through in these performances.

Old demos come to see the light of day- Demo – Tate Eskew – Waking Up

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 02:33:44 +0000

So, I was thinking the other day that I should just start posting old demos of songs that I have laying around. My friend Chad was kind enough to dig through old CDs and old computer drives to find a bulk of this stuff. Most of it I had forgotten about. Some of it is cool, some are mediocre and some of it is total shit.

The first track I’m going to post is called Waking Up. I did this demo around 10 years ago. I’m pretty sure at a dark time. I originally wrote the song in about 1997 while living in a smoke-filled apartment in Los(t) Angeles. I’ve always wanted to record this song again in my studio with layers of guitars, but have never done it. Maybe it’ll just stay as is in a time vault.

Bands In Town

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:21:51 +0000

Bands in Town is something I came across today and it seems pretty cool. It shows a tag cloud of artists that are playing in a specified area and the dates when they play. It will even let you take a listen to the band via a streaming player.

last.fm users can log in using their username/pass and it will filter to bands that it thinks you’ll like. You can also filter based on location and distance from that location.

Week 10 – Weekly Song Experiment – Pneumonia

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 03:25:26 +0000

I’m not sure how I did it this week. I started recording this song at 9 o’clock tonight. It’s now 10:21. I recorded this up in the bonus room bathroom. I’ve been sick as all get out this past week and I’m still not over it. I couldn’t sing and I feel pretty bad at the moment. We also are living amongst boxes at the new house. This week was a struggle.

Week 09 – Weekly song experiment – Song For a Former Friend

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:43:19 +0000

Here we are at week 9. I have no idea how I wrote and recorded a song this week. This week we moved everything out to our new house and we have tons of sorting and unpacking to do.

This week’s song is called Song For a Former Friend. Head over to the weekly song experiment page to take a listen. Thanks again for your email and notes.

Week 07 – Weekly Song Experiment – My Son

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:52:25 +0000

Here it is. This week’s installment of the weekly song experiment. This week’s song is about our son, Daniel and I conned my wife Amy into singing it with me. I think she did a great job and she’s also pretty.

Thanks, everyone for the comments and emails. I always appreciate getting them and I do respond to every one of them.

So, head over to the weekly song experiment page and take a listen to the song for this week, M_y Son_

Week 06 – Weekly Song Experiment – Powered by Fear

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 04:12:28 +0000

This week I was able to sing again. The head cold has passed. I was able to knock this song out within a few days this week. We’ve been incredibly busy working on the new house so that we can get moved in, but I’m enjoying trying to cram music time in. It really does feel great to just create it and let it go. I don’t know how many people are out there listening, but it really doesn’t matter. It’s out there.

Week 05 – Weekly Song Experiment – The Middle Way

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 20:19:35 +0000

I’ve had a head cold all week so I wasn’t able to write anything with lyrics, so what you get is another instrumental piece. This week’s song is entitled The Middle Way.

Pushing myself to practice this and I think the song portrays a piece of that.

Head over to the weekly song experiment page to listen to the new song.

Week 03 – Weekly Song Experiment – Oblivious

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:56:55 +0000

The new song for my weekly song experiment has been posted. I also added links so you could download them in Ogg format if that’s your bag. During the week sometime I will probably add links to include FLAC encoded files.

The project is proving difficult to fit in with the time available, but it’s a really good experiment.

Anyway, the new song is entitled O_blivious_. Head over to the weekly song experiment page to listen or download.

Week 02 – Weekly Song Experiment – Deny the Anxiety

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 23:08:49 +0000

Well, I’ve managed to get another song done this week. You can check it out over at the weekly song experiment page. The weeks are getting quite busy as I have a lot of things to do over the next couple of weeks. It should make for an interesting go at it with these songs.
It’s very weird not to use my studio monitors to mix these experiments. I’m only using headphones, so if the low end isn’t 100% correct, well, now you know why.

Week 1 – Weekly Song Experiment – Bring It All To Me

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:23:13 +0000

I’ve decided to start a new weekly song experiment for 2008. You can read about it on the weekly song experiment page. I’m not sure how I’m going to cram this into the limited time I already have, but I think it would be a good exercise to take on.

The first song is posted and from here on out the weekly song/piece of music will be posted on either Sunday or Monday. The first song is entitled Bring It All To Me.

Music and the brain…

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 02:48:32 +0000

Amy, my wife, got me the new Oliver Sacks book Musicophilia and it’s really incredible. I’ve just started reading it, but the book grabs you at the preface. I’ve read one other sacks book, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, which was really great. sacks is an amazing writer and quite a scientist (he’s a neurologist). I think about how the brain reacts to music almost daily. I’ve also often wondered why humans seem to have some primal instinct that draws them towards music/rhythms and the reason why some people have a greater ability to “just get it” and a “brain” for it. Oliver Sacks covers this in an amazing fashion. if you love both science and music, this thing is a must-read. it’s quite inspiring.

david byrne – other peoples problems

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 05:00:12 +0000

there is a fantastic david byrne article over at wired magazine’s site. i love pretty much everything david byrne does, yes, even that crazy french shit on one of his recent albums. he’s always been an incredibly insightful person with regards to the music industry and this article is no different. i have to say that his outlook on this whole craptastic music industry is quite inspiring and i hope he’s right. this is the stuff i am most interested in with regards to what “models” work in this day and age.