Impasto Gardens is the latest recording project from Austin-based guitarist and producer Joseph McCaffrey. The self-titled debut LP is a collection of home studio recordings layered with lush guitars, pulsing basslines, drums, sparse vocals, and sprinklings of piano, synths, and percussive instruments used to create sonic landscapes. Each track exists as its own little world, encapsulating specific moments as experienced or dreamt about and interpreted through song.
This is a return to musical output following a long dormant period after the successes of the mid-aughts indie-pop band Nightmare of You (Warner/Sire Records), in which Joe was a founding member and guitarist. Still influenced by 80’s and 90’s British rock bands, Impasto Gardens tunes more into the pop rock, neo-psych, and shoegaze sounds of Manchester than the new wave stylings of The Smiths or The Cure, that Nightmare of You took cues from. Subtle nods to The Stone Roses, Blur, Supergrass, Slowdive, and The Jesus and Mary Chain (among many others) can be found across the sonic worlds imagined in Impasto Gardens tracks.
Inspiration for and connection to music as a creator and listener comes in both sonic and visual ways. Opening himself up as a filter to the energy surrounding him in the universe and tuning into these abundant frequencies as naturally as possible, Impasto Gardens is moved by the simple beauty in the earth’s landscape and everything that inhabits it.