On Patrol (LP)

A reissue of the 2010 double LP.

The Some people are simply natural communicators. Sun Araw, a.k.a. Cameron Stallones, is one of those gifted people.

Through his music, his art, and his words, you get the sense that he is always transmitting precisely what he wants you to understand. He would call it "speaking the Word," the mother tongue that humanity shared before Babel and that will be shared once again in the future. But truth, unfettered and absolute, isn't always so easily understood, especially when we are all speaking our individual languages.

On Patrol is Sun Araw's densest yet most digestible effort to date. With over 80 minutes of low-slung tropical psych-funk, the record is drenched in a thick humidity, but despite the length, the jams here are forever buoyant, carried on by Stallones' admiration and understanding of long-take filmmaking.

In an interview with Tiny Mix Tapes last year, Stallones discussed how "that sort of camera movement through space, the slowly shifting perspective" had become a big part of his music.

The lengthy songs that make up On Patrol maintain a constant but fluid stomp, elements phasing in and out, trading dance steps with each other in elaborate, improvised rituals. It's like watching the jungle pass by from the window of a train: greens, reds, yellows, and purples appearing as a blur that you understand as the separate elements of the same living scene.