Name: Waking Hours
Brand: Photay

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

MEX2631

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Colour

black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Discs

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2020-07-31

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

The Orchard

Tax rate GB

UPC / Barcode

184923126310

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1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

MEX2632

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184923126327

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "184923126327"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Photay

Genre GB

Electronic

Label GB

Mexican Summer

It's 2020, and everyone is exhausted. The world is falling apart, and then there's the day-to- day stress of just existing in the modern world. Keeping up with everything feels impossible, and we all feel that neverending push to always be productive, inspiration and motivation be damned.

For NYC artist Photay (a.k.a. Evan Shornstein), none of this is particularly conducive to living a healthy existence, let alone being creative, but he's decided to face it head on. Waking Hours, his second full-length (following 2017's Onism), is a meditation on time and, more specifically, our obsessive need to fill every moment with activity. "It's about getting back to a really simple notion of just celebrating your existence and not necessarily attaching this huge story of who you are and what you do," he says. "It's about finding comfort in just being."

Photay's search for calm is at the very core of Waking Hours, and while he admits that making the album was therapeutic, it shouldn't be mistaken for some sort of healing ambient excursion. The LP is largely electronic, but frequently verges on pop and extensively features Shornstein's own vocals. The music is intimate and inviting, but it also suggests that Photay is perhaps at his best when he's blurring genre boundaries. "I really truly love so many different types of music," he says, "and for this album I opened things up and gave myself the freedom to go anywhere."

Waking Hours

Music GB