NED COLLETTE - Mixed Light LP

“I turned on CNN on a recent flight to try and catch up before I landed, and all I saw was an hour of ads for how essential CNN’s news coverage is with no actual news. It whizzed past like a teenage TikTok feed. The flipside is I can still sit in a meadow with my kids just listening to the bees humming and the hour whizzes past quietly and just as quickly. There’s really no need for all this noise.”

We as a society, no matter where we are, find ourselves forced into a modern turmoil, one where the advantages we’re given to get things done and keep moving are the same things that can open the trap door right from under us. Ned’s lyrics and themes soften this collective worry, even if the temperature is turned up in the music. The whole binary dichotomy of “will this song bum someone out” is such a misnomer. We are capable of feeling a lot of things and I imagine anyone coming to Mixed Light is going to feel some sort of way that hadn't hit on that precise level before getting to it. That's what makes music, when done properly, special – getting to hold all of these listeners in a contemplative mode when this chaos is all around us is a surprising display of soft power.

Revealing a hidden agenda within modern music through tinted glass and stained sentiments, Ned’s latest missives are like a football kicked through the window of the old rustic house that the neighborhood kids talk about in hushed whispers. This music envisions the courage needed to go retrieve it, knowing the experience makes us more prepared for the lessons learned from it over time than the fear of trouble it causes in the now. - Doug Mosurock