Bear in the Snow, by The Spookfish

Bear in the Snow

by The Spookfish

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This vinyl comes with a instruction manual for the Bear in the Snow video game and a download for the video game.

Includes unlimited streaming of Bear in the Snow via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	Skeleton 00:44	buy track
2.	Shiver Town 1 02:19	buy track
3.	Tower 01:17	buy track
4.	Berry 01:26	buy track
5.	Other World 01:20	buy track
6.	Duck Pond Path 02:35	buy track
7.	Misanthropy 01:51	buy track
8.	Shiver Town 2 02:55	buy track
9.	River 01:10	buy track
10.	(coyotes) 00:33	buy track
11.	Waltzing Ghost 02:41	buy track
12.	Magic Puffball 01:53	buy track
13.	Spider House 02:14	buy track
14.	Catskill 02:08	buy track

about

BEAR IN THE SNOW video game can be found at:
the-spookfish.itch.io/bear-in-the-snow

We Be Friends is pleased to announce Bear in the Snow, the latest record from the Maine-based singer and songwriter The Spookfish, a 14-track record that continues artist Dan Goldberg’s work developing a space between folk, American primitive, and lo-fi electronics. Recorded over the last five years while living in New Paltz, NY and studying music therapy, the record is a subtle yet powerful work that draws strength and confidence from its sparse, direct compositions.

Bear in the Snow, reflects the quiet solitude and intense introspection of life in the hilly reaches of Upstate New York, with ecstatic guitar playing and woozy, swelling synthesizer dotted by the artist’s plaintive, direct lyricism. “We used to be in love dear, you don’t see me now…” Goldberg sings in the opening notes of the record, tracing delicate, mournful meditations over a lilting guitar figure before the track fades into the thumping rhythm and hypnotic synthesizer arpeggios of “Shiver Town 1.” The record winds its way back and forth between these two poles, stringing together electronic compositions, sonic collage and frank, minimal guitar and voice, as if moving in and out a waking dream.

There’s much to that concept in Goldberg’s work, with lyrical allusions to waking or drifting into slumber, and even songs explicitly based on the artist’s dreams, while interludes like “Coyotes” pull the listener out of the album’s internal world with the haunting cry of the titular animal. With a body of work that draws so heavily on the intimacy of its arrangements and the raw, immediate nature of his recording process, these moments seem to rush in on the listener; sonic ghosts howling just outside the window. In another track, the track cuts off due to an interruption by a radio switching channels, as if a ghostly force had interfered with the recording.

Yet for all the moments of the ethereal and phantasmagorical in the artist’s work, Goldberg makes the most of the moments of emotional clarity and directness. “I walk through the trails, I don’t mind getting old alone,” he sings on the album’s final track, “Catskill,” opening up a fitting conclusion that touches on loss, love, and absence. It’s as if this last waking reverie carries with it a moment of true clarity, a moment of seeing the world as it is, of understanding and transmuting that tension between dream and reality into art.

In a fitting addition, the record is accompanied by a video game developed over the process of recording, and featuring early arrangements of the record as part of its soundtrack. It’s a dreamworld version of the record, one that parallels and echoes its recorded counterpoint with a surreal landscape and haunting cast of characters to complement the album.

-Daniel Creahan

credits

released September 7, 2023

Album Cover: Ashelee Collier
Back Cover and Instruction Manual Design: E. Saffronia Downing
"Magic Puffball" recording, mixing, and production by David Rogers Berry
"Shivertown 1" and "Shivertown 2" recorded by Andrew Nerviano
All other recording, mixing and mastering by Justin Randel
All songs written, performed, and produced by Dan Goldberg aka "The Spookfish"

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The Spookfish New Paltz, New York

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