The Shy Reserve

Azuline (2024)

The Shy Reserve - Azuline

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01. Time Flies and Drags

02. Secret Chords

03. Fillyloo

04. Grin Inducer

05. When Nothing Never Occurs

06. Amping the Hourglass

07. Beatrice

08. Eye Contact

09. Lower Lash Line

10. Porcelain

All songs written and recorded by Randal Gordon Prater

Published by Doldrum (BMI)

Porcelain has extra vocals by Lynda Mandolyn, plus guitar by Serge Vladimiroff and Peter Sawtell

After writing/recording five solo albums, one album for The Pagan States and three albums for Creeping Myrtle, I decided to start making music under a new moniker. The Shy Reserve was taken from a song title on the album Ode to the Urchin as a way to sort of go back to my original Shoegaze roots when I first started writing songs in the early ’90s, after being heavily influenced by bands like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine. It was also the first album where I was able to play guitar again after nearly 15 years of mostly playing piano.

I’m immensely proud of this album, especially the opening track called Time Flies and Drags. After being stuck on that song for a year and a half and a million different takes of recording keyboards, I decided to buy a guitar (an emerald green Guild Starfire that I call Golders Green, named after the Pete Ham album of the same name). The song instantly fell into place after I added some gooey Shoegaze guitar tracks to it. The rest of the songs came together fairly quickly thereafter.

Released October 24, 2024