"A journey to Cedar Lake in northern Minnesota is going to take some effort, no matter where you’re coming from. The lake sits in Morse Township, population of a little more than 1200 people, about 4 hours north of Minneapolis and a stone’s throw from the Canadian border. To get to Cedar Lake, you’ll pass through small towns like Independence, Ely, Winton, and Babbitt; maybe even Embarrass if you want a short detour. (Yes, it really does exist.) Once at the lake, what you leave behind in speedy internet service and hip coffee shops is made up by a connection to land, water, time, and solitude. Like a journey to Cedar Lake, the music on Chicago-based percussionist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Erik Sowa’s debut solo recording, Cedar Lake Recordings, Volume 1, will ask you to both let go and embrace. Like the lake itself, it will welcome you into a slower sense of time and the possibilities found in solitude. The connection between Erik’s music and Cedar Lake is forged by the remarkable story of how and where the 9 tracks of this album were imagined and recorded: at a remote property on the lake, usually referred to as “the camp”, that has been in his family since the late 1960s and where Erik has spent the majority of his summers since the age of 8.

“The camp feels like a lifelong, supportive friend,” states Erik about his connection to the place. Even with access to many of the best recording studios in the world in his hometown of Chicago, to make these recordings, Erik makes a 9-hour car ride, ferries his instruments and recording equipment in a motorboat in 2 trips across the lake, then portages it all through the woods and up 2 flights of stairs to one of the camp’s A-frame cabins. Here he sets up for days of solitary recording on an 8-track analog cassette recorder using a car battery for power since the camp does not have electricity. During the recording process, interruptions may come less through mistakes in performance than by the sound of bears rummaging around the property. And yet, the outcome is well worth the effort to Erik as the camp is where he believes he is at his musical best. “The experiences I've had of playing and recording music at the camp are more engaging and exciting for me than the majority of my other experiences.”

It would be a mistake to think of this austere studio choice as romantic or mere novelty. In other hands, this might be the case, but in Erik’s we have the deep commitment of an artist who has forged a focused pathway in music, through constant investigation, experimentation, study, and sacrifice. As a drummer and percussionist, he exists within the realm of Chicago’s improvised and experimental music community, influenced by the genre-defying approach of that city’s great drumming tradition. On another part of his musical path, Erik has performed and recorded on projects ranging from singer-songwriters, to synth pop duos, to indie rock bands. “The most important thing to me is his awareness that sound is true,” offers Conor Harvey, with whom Erik has worked for years in the duo project 6 ½ Furlongs. “As heady a producer as he is, he doesn't manipulate the song. He'll build it into something beautiful, chaotic, cascading.”

Harvey seems to get at the essence of the music we hear on Cedar Lake Recordings, Volume 1. On tracks like the opening Dibishkam, we encounter deep grooves and gauzy soundscapes that defy easy categorization but suggest, well, I’ll go for the easy but very apt metaphor: paddling through mist on a still lake. On other tracks – Snowshoe Hare, Goldfinch Cyborg, Swimming with Crocodile – we hear a catchy melodicism that stays with us long after listening. (Watch out for the ear worms . . . the good kind that keeps you company.) Other tracks are sonic meditations in the tradition of Harry Partch or Pauline Oliveros where we can’t quite define what we’re hearing but recognize it’s all changing in time, like a hanging mobile refracting light and shadow. Then there are moments like one I particularly love in Pack House Shuffle, about ¾ of the way through, just when you think Erik has given you all you need, something subtle enters (I won’t give it away) and you’re lifted, floating, bobbing your head because it’s simultaneously surprising yet expected.

It’s important to bring us back to the fact that though Erik is joined by 2 fantastic guests on this album, the sounds we’re hearing are primarily created by him alone, mostly through improvisation, overdubbing myriad instruments from drums to guitar to banjo to air organ to percussion of all stripes, all the while watching that the recording gear is functioning properly, that the car battery does not die, that sounds from the woods do not ruin a take. His skills as an engineer show up well here too, even though his chosen recording method is not an easy one. The close miking, subtle processing, careful mixing, and great mastering unfold in a sonic tapestry across the 9 tracks. In true improvised fashion, the process of making this album is in equal measure to its outcome.

Cedar Lake Recordings, Volume 1 ends abruptly with the morphing, intertwining drones of Yellowjacket Ranch coming to a close in a way that caught me by surprise on first listen. But after multiple listenings, that fog cleared: this is not the end of the journey nor the end of the music that will come out of the camp. Erik’s musical landscape, created in the woods of northern Minnesota with analog cassette tapes, stacks of instruments, no running electricity, and bear break-ins, is a lasting one, forged in time and solitude. The sense that this record ends on an abrupt note only makes me long for the next one".

James Falzone
July 2022
Seattle, Washington