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GIFT and Peel Dream Magazine
The following description was submitted by the event organizer.
Every moment is a gift. Each moment has richness, complexity, and singularity. Once it's gone, it can't be recaptured. Can you be present? Can you open yourself up and appreciate it in its fullness — the ugliness, confusion, beauty, and joy? The Brooklyn, NY, psychedelic rock quintet GIFT members believe you can. Momentary Presence, their debut set, is a chronicle of that chase and a celebration of the eternal now.
Those teachings, drawn from Be Here Now, the 1971 spiritual guide and counterculture landmark by guru Ram Dass, felt particularly relevant in 2022. GIFT bandleader TJ Freda applied those lessons to his search for peace. He's discovered transcendence through music: he and his bandmates Jessica Gurewitz, Kallan Campbell, Justin Hrabovsky, and Cooper Naess have a knack for conjuring soundscapes that are simultaneously turbulent and gorgeous. Right in the middle of those mixes, you'll find Freda himself, commanding the storm, lighting lamps amid turmoil, singing about psychic destabilization and the quest for balance, in a voice that feels like a caress.
Peel Dream Magazine is the nom-de-plume of Los Angeles songwriter Joseph Stevens. Drawing on kosmische, shoegaze, baroque pop, and retro electronica, the band emerged from New York City’s vibrant DIY scene with its 2018 debut Modern Meta Physic, which Aquarium Drunkard hailed as “one of the more true inheritors of the mantle of Stereolab to emerge in some time”. Eighteen months later, the band released their more aggressive sophomore LP, Agitprop Alterna, which proved to be a breakout success. Pitchfork described it as “a term paper on Bertolt Brecht and Karl Marx, written to a soundtrack of Tropicália, motorik, and library music,” and NPR’s Lars Gotrich as “fuzz bliss”.