"This album has been a long time coming. We were lucky enough to do a tape in 2022 with Jeremy Hurewitz (aka Rootless) called what the truth leaves out. But this is the first time we’ve been able to work with long-time fave, Matt Lajoie, who appears with Ash Brooks as half of the no-longer-active duo, Starbirthed. 

The idea for this pairing was presented to us by Jeremy, who recorded the album at his cabin in southern Vermont in 2019. Jeremy’s Rootless project generally features at least a soupçon of acoustic guitar (often combined with electronics or other things) and Starbirthed was initially canted towards producing music for meditation, although their instrumentation — voice, bass, guitar, synth, bells, etc. — also meant that some of the recordings possessed more of a gentle free rock heft than anything overtly new agey. Anyway, soon after the session, the Plague hit, the members of Starbirthed decided to go their own ways, and everything got sorta dragged down in the torpor of the times. 

But Jeremy persisted in wanting to get the session finished and together, and he succeeded quite admirably. The music on Rootless & Starbirthed is a glorious celebration of what I’d describe as a rural utopian vision of possible futures in which the world does not go straight into the shitter. This is music that glows with kind of positive energy that might be galling if it didn’t sound so great.

Both Rootless and Starbirthed (as well as Matt’s many other projects — Herbcraft, ML Wah, etc.) are about creating an atmosphere in which beauty thrives as much as anything else. And this great collab LP flows like a newly discovered river, carrying us away from the anxiety and insect paranoia of our quotidian reality. Positing something better, just around the corner. Something we are not yet able to see, but which might. just. save the day. This might sound like old man hippie thinking, but that’s cool. I’ve been called worse. And so have you." - Byron Coley