Shabason, Krgovich & Harris

On their album Philadelphia, Nicholas Krgovich, Joseph Shabason, and Chris Harris chase a kind of romance toward the mundane and minuscule details made more visible by the world’s newfound relationship with the Great Indoors. The three musicians, who convened on a shared love of New Age music, create a space of sonic refuge out of softly electrified textures, burbling live instrumentation, and Shabason’s lacquered synth work, all of which support Krgovich’s koan-like poetry about showers before bed, dusty minivans, sips of gatorade, and the modern minutiae rendered beautiful by mere observation. Contrasting the forced trend of remote collaborations, Philadelphia was recorded across three days of sessions in Toronto, pre-COVID. “Somewhere back in 2018 we started to pass demos back and forth over email and we quickly got about eight song sketches together,” explains Shabason. “Then in fall of 2019 we all realized that if we didn’t get into the same room together we were never gonna finish this album.” The trio’s physical proximity while recording underwrites the hushed tones that pervade the album, which itself reads like the kind of quiet, personal conversation that can only happen in close quarters lest it be washed away in the din of public life.