East Portal, a collaboration between John Atkinson and Patrick Taylor, has released its debut album East Portal on AKP Recordings.

Across the seven tracks of the self-titled release, the duo delicately crafts atmospheric yet restrained work in the spirit of Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the seasonal releases by Jussell, Prymek, Sage, Shiroishi under the Fuubutsushi moniker. Pedal steel, upright bass, and virtual ‘acoustic’ instruments created with bespoke digital processing become characters engrossed in a bi-coastal conversation between their creators.  

Today East Portal has dropped the video for “Sub Nest.”  The video captures the music being presented in the most honest of ways with what feels like a painting being showcased in motion. The band said, ”’Sub Nest’ is an end-of-summer video and vibe – flashes of the subway speeding over the Manhattan Bridge, feeling that special August flavor of overripe FOMO, sundazed and burnt out and still chasing a mythical chill. At the midpoint of the album, we wanted to create a feeling that was propulsive but also meditative, with the processed harmonica loop at Subnest’s core surrounded by a shimmering halo of stretched-out string drone.”

Together, East Portal create a hyperreal world where jazz-inflected melodies fuse with uncanny electroacoustic textures, and songs mutate from gorgeous compositions for upright, bass, strings, and clarinet to long stretches of swooning, deconstructed ambient. This unexpected pairing of LA polish and NY grit creates a bracingly fresh combination, brimming with unique sounds and new possibilities that transcend the cliches of both the pop and ambient worlds to arrive somewhere new and forward-looking.

Listen to/purchase East Portal HERE.

Photo Courtesy: Gene Tolan