Flight Final by William Tyler

When William Tyler left Los Angeles in the confused hurry of early 2020, he left behind most of his recording rig, too. Back in Nashville, he rendered new musical sketches with an iPhone and an old tape machine he found while cleaning out his late grandfather’s Mississippi office. He leaned into this admixture of distortions new and old, welding guitar and electronics to connect past echoes to the present.

“Flight Final”—Tyler’s first new music since his lauded collaboration with Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden in 2023—explores these liminal spaces, with time and tone bending until the whole world blurs. Samples and sequences first spell out a counting game, pulses and numbers phasing into a Steve Reich fantasia for one. But sighing steel guitar and wistful country licks confuse the chronology even more, pulling the seconds apart until they seem to stretch toward forever, an endless horizon of confusion and wonder. This is a soundtrack to realizing that moving forward never entirely means escaping what is behind you. “Final Flight” is also a tease; expect more music from Tyler, exploring these same deep veins, in 2025.

William Tyler is a Nashville guitarist and composer. He spent years woodshedding and touring with Nashville groups like Lambchop and Silver Jews before breaking away to focus on his own version of instrumental guitar music.