Joel Shanahan (Golden Donna) returns with his Auscultation project this month. The producer is readying his LP III for release on May 8th via 100% Silk. His first effort for the label since 2016’s L’étreinte Imaginaire, the project was temporarily on hold following the Ghost Ship tragedy that year in Oakland where he was slated to perform the night of the devastating warehouse fire.
Taking the name for his project from a medical term that involves listening to the body’s major organ functions as a means of diagnosis, like a doctor with a stethoscope, seems the appropriate moniker for Shanahan at this time–even though he has released music on-and-off under the name for several years prior to the Ghost Ship event.
“Glowing Hearts In The Rainbow Room” opens his new album, and it is a fitting tribute that conjures up wide-eyed innocence and the promise of youth. The track’s slow swirling melody flashes like colored lights against the padded mist of blissful memories. Nudged along by a throbbing rhythm, Shanahan captures the remembrance of a perfect moment, and then against a backdrop of fading time and skittering beats, attempts to bravely hold on to it forever. This track seems to say, “Friend, I’ll never forget the good times we had.”
