East Portal by East Portal

East Portal is a collaboration connecting the pop music industry of Los Angeles and the experimental Brooklyn DIY scene. Out west, Patrick Taylor has lent his multi-instrumental skills to established and upcoming pop and indie rock acts in the studio, and has been touring bassist for acts like Nick Jonas and American Idol Live. From the east, John Atkinson co-led influential underground Brooklyn loft party mainstays Aa (Big A little a) - hailed by Pitchfork for creating an “expertly sculpted 3D sound world” - since the mid-2000s and has more recently turned towards solo ambient explorations.

Together, they create a hyperreal world where jazz-inflected melodies fuse with delicate electroacoustic textures, and songs mutate from gorgeous compositions for upright, bass, strings, and clarinet to long stretches of swooning, deconstructed ambient. This pairing of LA polish and NY grit creates a bracingly fresh combination, brimming with unique sounds and new possibilities that transcend the cliches of both the pop and ambient worlds to arrive somewhere wholly new and forward-looking.

Tracklist

1.	Untitled #1	6:57

2.	Swords Reverse	4:34

3.	Rut	4:16

4.	Sub Nest	4:29

5.	Untitled #3	8:47

6.	Tendo	7:36

7.	Breakfast On Ground	8:31

Videos

Credits

released April 8, 2022

Recorded April 2020-February 2021 in Los Angeles and New York

Patrick Taylor: Upright and fretless bass, clarinet, acoustic guitar, ukulele, pedal steel, percussion
John Atkinson: Digital manipulations of Patrick's sounds, bell on "Untitled #1", shruti box on "Breakfast On Ground"
Nick Podgurski: Drums on "Untitled #1"

Mixed by Patrick Taylor
Mastered by Taylor Deupree
Artwork by Gene Tolan, Sarah Wintner, and Rinat Brodach
Layout by Francie Chang

Thanks to our families, our partners, our friends, The Chat, and everyone else we leaned on in person and online to get through this unimaginable time, and thanks to AKP for helping to bring this virtual collaboration into (hyper)reality.

AKP007

License