A quiet collaboration between Kevin McCormick and David Horridge returns, newly remastered and repressed after the label’s sought-after 2021 reissue. Kevin McCormick met David Horridge in 1970, both […]
Show Me the Sunshine: The Final Installment of Baba Stiltz’s “In L.A.” Tape Series
“LA is a real place. I’ve got it tattooed on the palms of my hands.”
A musical diary of sorts, Baba Stiltz’s In L.A. tape series documents the Swedish-Filipino-American artist’s movements through the West Coast of California, from his family’s home in Vacaville to Los Angeles, where he lived for a period of time, and beyond. The final installment of the series coincides with a deeply transitory period in the artist’s life as he moved between cities. Recorded in Pasadena with little more than a guitar, microphone, and a few pedals, the tracks play out like intimate reflections on moments passed, lives gone, or just beginning.
The tape includes a solo guitar rendition of the song “Let Me Know,” which was originally released on Stiltz’s beautiful 2024 collaborative album Blurb with Norwegian-American singer-songwriter Okay Kaya. Heard in this context, the song takes on an even more somber tone. “I’ll let them know, you won’t be able to make it.” Nestled within the guitar tracks are also field recordings of a “Dayrave at El Captain Ranch” in Santa Barbara, “Memories of Baganga” from a trip to the Philippines, and birdsong from the “Tropics.” Always on the move, Stiltz and his guitar trace vagrant lines in search of sunshine…
“I feel like LA is such a vortex of weirdness. It has always been about the unreal and the dream of it.”
In L.A. 3 comes with the following liner notes:
“With In LA 3, Baba Stiltz concludes his trilogy of sun-soaked guitar music inspired by the city of Los Angeles. Drawing from its open spaces, strip malls, and the general uncanniness of the West Coast Metropolis, he offers the listener an auto-fictive auditory experience.
Track titles such as “I Don’t Trust These Bags”, “A Suggestion to end Ambient Hegemony” and “My Wife (I Love)” hint at contemporary themes—a city in flux post-2020, and the artist’s own struggles amid changing times.
The A-side introduces us to a severely minimal and meditative side of Stiltz’s expression. Seemingly drawing inspiration from Taku Sugimoto’s use of silence and Derek Bailey’s improvisational gusto, he guides us through 45 minutes of music with a gentle yet ghostly hand. Side B shifts perspectives, offering a view of LA rooted in deep, primitive Americana traditions. With John Fahey’s influence ever-present in Stiltz’s guitar work, the trilogy concludes with generous melodic phrasing—echoes of blues, bluegrass, and sweaty East Hollywood rock ’n’ roll hangovers.”
Copies of In LA 3 are available now via In Sheep’s Clothing Records.
Shops can reach out to [email protected]
Side B of the tape has been uploaded in its entirety with visual accompaniment shot by Stiltz himself.
