released March 5, 2021

Reviews
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"One of the busiest creators in the scene, Keith Wallace splits his time making music as Loner Deluxe and running West Coast micro-independent label Rusted Rail. Taking in both realms, March 5th saw the release of Field Recordings, a wonderfully genre-spanning, 14-track release – Loner Deluxe’s third full-length to date – that reveals Wallace’s knack for lo-fi songwriting that curveballs at every turn. Field Recordings, is hands down one of our favourite Irish albums of the year thus far." - The Thin Air

"Mainly the work of Rusted Rail boss Keith Wallace, with the help of Cecilia Danell and Brian Kelly, this album is a delightful musical ramble that is inspired by lo-fi rather than being lo-fi, the music changing mood at a whim, always something new to delight the ear as the journey continues.

Opening with the excellently titled “Track 1 Side1”, you are instantly dragged in by a warm beat and electronics before an acoustic guitar and lovely pop vocals join the welcome, the throwaway yet perfect lyrics adding another layer before things get slightly heavier with a fine guitar solo that cuts through everything, the tune reminding me of The Pigeons blended with Pavement, a touch of Ant Bee thrown in for good measure. Next up, “Off the Grid” is a stoned Sunday afternoon instrumental, a lazy drum/bass groove overlaid with rippling guitar and buzzing electronics, the same atmosphere apparent in “Tin Foil Hat” although vocals and a Hohner Organetta, played by David Colohan, turn the tune into a strange mix of wobbly folk and the Pet Shop Boys.

I guess this opening salvo is a great introduction to the rest of the album, the music, playful, intriguing and never dull, the use of some well imagined electronic beats adding energy and purpose to the proceedings especially on the low groove of “Gone Fission”, a track that gets the head nodding with its repetitive ambience or indeed on “Mist Calls” which somehow reminds me of Phil Spector although I am not sure why.

Elsewhere, “Ex Directory” starts off with the promise of a Black Sabbath inspired riff before morphing into a version of “Down Down” heard in a dream, fabulous stuff and a personal favourite. Sounding like an obscure 4AD band “Space Junk” also hits the spot, a sweet bath filled with electronics, soft vocals and a chiming banjo, just climb right in and relax.

Within the context of this album “Viral Hit” could be seen as an epic song, soaring chords and vocals embellished with banjo and distorted guitar creating a great finale that leads back out to the real world. Saving the best until last, at least in this review “Cancel the Fear” has the the feel of early Beck, lo-fi hip hop beats and droning instruments the perfect background for the lyrical delivery, possibly the strongest song on a collection filled with quality tunes, perfect for lazy afternoons in the garden or, indeed, any other moment." - Terrascope


"And what a beautiful outburst of quirky otherworldliness!
Keith who is the boss of Rusted Rail together with Cecilia from A Lilac Decline and Brian Kelly from So Cow create a beautiful collection of psychedelic folk frenzy with the touches of dub ( check out that reverberated/delayed/echoed production in Off The Grid) and krautrock that has both quite honest melancholy in it but also quite a good deal of cosmic minimalistic repetition with some nice creamy synths on the top.

There's a motorik almost new wave-ish feel to many tracks like in Tin Foil Hat that draws quite a good bit of attention. Using simple beat machines as in Mist Call proves how much you can get from only seemingly simplistic beat that can be both subtle and an excellent background to more subtle aspects of this psychedelic trip. There are beautiful parts of folk broken with synths as in Meet on the Wedge. With 14 tracks each song is its own story, beautiful, funny and strange. This is definitely one of the albums worth coming back to." - Felt Hat


"This sequel to 2017’s Songs I Taped Off the Radio album, finds Galway-based multi-instrumentalist and vocalist ringleader Keith Wallace joined closely by singer/guitarist/banjo-player Cecilia Danell (A Lilac Decline) and guitarist Brian Kelly (So Cow), to spread out an absolute smorgasbord of satisfyingly moreish lo-fi-to-mid-fi flavours. At times feeling like a mixtape compiled from the shelves of a discerning connoisseur of early-1990s-to-mid-2000s Matador, Merge, 4AD and the like, Field Recordings should appeal to those who really found their ears and record buying addictions in such a period.

Hence, through a hearty spooling of voice-led pieces and instrumentals, we’re spun through murmurous Folk Implosion chugging and buzzing (“Track 1 Side 1” and “Cancel the Fear”); dreamy blends of Madder Rose’s embryonic singles and Tanya Donelly’s unvarnished Sliding and Diving EP (“Tin Foil Hat” and “Space Junk”); wobbly warm nods to The Breeders’ Title TK (“Meet on the Wedge” and “Ex Directory”); the twangy experimentalist corners within Yo La Tengo’s I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (“Mist Call” and “Radiation Record”); imagined lost Grandaddy-meets-Sparklehorse b-side hook-ups (“Comet Light”); and Slowdive-soaked shoegaze deconstructed with banjo and balmy co-ed tones (“Viral Hit”).

Also adding in more modern day lyrical narratives about surveillance states, technophobia, conspiracy theories and our recent socially distanced living – that are subtly squeezed into the sonic magpie foraging – means there’s a lot of richly detailed pickings to be harvested from Field Recordings. Dig in and don’t be disappointed." - Concrete Islands



"Field Recordings - Loner Deluxe's sonic trip through these troubled times.

There is, perhaps, a certain West of Ireland echo - or echoes, if you will - in the sleeve of Field Recordings, the new Loner Deluxe album, to that of the sleeve for Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother. Both feature a farm animal, alone in a field, staring back at the viewer, and the covers of both hint at, and deliberately distract from, the contents within.

The bliss and majesty of Atom Heart Mother's bucolic, pastoral, folk-rock and prog served to mask its dark themes - mental breakdown, anxiety, failed romances, the failure to understand and connect with others, and nostalgia for days which can never return.

Similarly, Field Recordings, released on Friday March 5, via independent Galway label Rusted Rail, draws on a wide palette of sounds, perhaps the Loner's widest yet - lo-fi bedroom pop, garage rock, electronica, hip-hop, and more left field influences such as the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

What unites these seemingly incompatible genres is the intimate feel of the music, a happy balancing of rhythm and melody, and a sense of humour. Yet underneath, lie dark themes of technophobia, paranoia, conspiracy, nuclear fallout, vandalism, gentrification, environmental collapse, and of course the Covid-19 pandemic ('Viral Hit' ).

Yet hope comes in the form of 'Meet On The Wedge', a nod to the 1968 Fairport Convention number, 'Meet On The Ledge'. The Loner's tune celebrates summer days meeting friends by the canal, near the bridge which links Upper and Lower Dominick Street - something we cannot do right now, but which we can look forward to doing post-pandemic.

The music was created, assembled, and performed by Loner Deluxe (Keith Wallace), Cecilia Danell (A Lilac Decline) and Brian Kelly (So Cow), and Dave Colohan, and mastered by Aaron Hurley. It is the follow-up to the Loner's 2017 cassette release, Songs I Taped Off the Radio." - The Galway Advertiser


“The new Loner Deluxe record is a flowing, melodic journey brimming with energy and musical ambition. Field Recordings is Keith Wallace’s most complete project to date - though it is difficult to pin the album to one specific theme, there is a definite style and tone that rings strong throughout.” - Galway City Tribune/Connacht Tribune


"Loner Deluxe is the alter-ego and musical project of Keith Wallace, whom, since 2006, has run the Rusted Rail record label, which is based in Galway, Ireland. Field Recordings is his first album since 2017’s Songs I Taped Off The Radio. I’ll kind of start the review where I might often end – and say that from the outset, this is a diverse and eclectic set of songs. I wouldn’t particularly describe the album as ‘cohesive’ – and that actually plays very much to its strengths, because each song sounds like it carries us off at a tangent – and sometimes in a completely different direction – to the previous song.

There’s a lo-fi feel to the recordings throughout – and a fuzzy, slightly stoned feel. ‘Meet On The Wedge’, for instance, has all the hallmarks of a tune written while sitting in the garden just after sunset, slightly jaded from the effects of an unknown substance.

‘Cancel The Fear’ unexpectedly manages to fuse Eels with John Carpenter. Elsewhere, there are bleeps, synth noises, and sounds which wouldn’t be out of place on a Dr. Who outtakes album. It probably won’t surprise you that there are themes of paranoia, cognitive dissonance and environmental decline herein.

‘Ex-Directory’ is what T-Rex might sound like if Mark Bolan‘s girlfriend whispered the vocals and Tangerine Dream were invited along to the party. It’s arguably the most ‘pop’ song here.

There’s definitely a feel-good retro theme going on here too. ‘Broken Compass’ could be the sound of an archived Kraftwerk session where ‎Florian Schneider decided to bring along an electric guitar with a fuzz effect pedal which he’s borrowed from Sonic Youth. Fans of seventies early electronica and lo-fi will be in their element.

‘Viral Hit’ rounds things off – and by my reckoning, it’s the standout track. It was apparently written during the pandemic, which just goes to show that some good things do actually come out of a pandemic.

In summary, there are countless ideas across this album – and that’s really the way this album should be approached when listening to it. It’s almost like a document – or a diarised soundtrack – of the randomised thoughts of Wallace, where none of the chapters of the book bear any relation to the next. Just because we’re hearing about a star exploding in a far away universe in the current song doesn’t mean we won’t hear about a vandalised phone box in the next one." - SIC Magazine



"In over a decade of activity, Loner Deluxe has gradually transformed itself from a solitary home experimentation project by Keith Wallace - also responsible for the Rusted Rail label - into a shared patchwork of sounds and harmonic fragments, in which a plurality of acoustic cues coexist in analog.

Decisive, particularly in the last part of the Irish artist's production, was the intensification of the partnership with Cecilia Danell (A Lilac Decline), who has now become an integral part of the band, together with Brian Kelly (So Cow),and whose contribution to the new “Field Recordings” is now almost equal to that of Wallace. In spite of the title, which claims its spontaneous and unadorned genesis, it is in fact an album of "songs", albeit bewildered and immersed in a whirlwind of pulsations, loops and assorted sound debris, which do not deny the original "weird" nature of the project, however amplifying the components of pop retro-futurism in medium fidelity.

The work collects fourteen agile miniatures (all under four minutes in duration) that rotate like a kaleidoscope in which sharp-edged sound segmentations, analogue textures and oblique acoustic strings follow one another with a pressing rhythm, completed from time to time by vocal parts with a surprising pop vein. The original experimental nature has by no means disappeared in the blender of sounds and styles proposed by the trio, but rather remains an integral part of the surreal "home folk of the third millennium" condensed in "Field Recordings" as a lucid, acrobatic testimony of a dystopian present. (Album of the Week)

- Music Won't Save You (internet translation from the original Italian)



"Loner Deluxe is the project of Irishman Keith Wallace with the help of Cecilia Danelll (A Lilac Decline) and Brian Kelly (So Cow). ‘Field Recordings’ takes in a plethora of sounds from pop to garage rock to hip-hop, all recorded with a fuzzy, hazy lo-fi aesthetic. It has even been described as lo-fi Sonic Youth produced by Kieran Hebden - that should pique your interest." - Norman Records