In the midst of a fall 2018 European tour, Boston 4-piece Elder rolled into Big Snuff Studio in Weissensee, Berlin to track a record. The intention was not to make "The New Elder Album,"but rather something liberated, unrestricted and experimental with no pressure or expectations related to 2017's towering Reflections of a Floating World.
Very simply, Elder were bringing their burning hot energy from the road straight into the studio to capture some of their farthest-reaching and most out-there ideas on tape.
The impetus for this lay in two places:
First, in their role as the flagship band taking part in the much-anticipated (and much delayed)PostWax project from Blues Funeral Recordings, an ambitious series of releases with interconnected art and an ethic encouraging its artists to try things they might not within their normal album cycles.
And second, in Elder singer/guitarist Nick DiSalvo's jammy, exploratory side project Gold & Silver, which previously gave he and keyboardist/guitarist Mike Risberg a vehicle to push outward from Elder's purposeful structures.
The result is The Gold & Silver Sessions, a three-song, 34-minute psych-rock adventure full of sweeping atmospherics and subtle textures that clearly originate with the Elder we know but end up in a whole new universe.
Says The Obelisk's JJ Koczan in the record's liner notes: "It’s thoughtful, expressive, nuanced, and... captures the fun and the raw enjoyment of playing together that one can easily see Elder have on stage, whether it’s Couto swinging away at his kit, Risberg feeling out the textures of a piece, Donovan doing a bit of boogie on his bass, or DiSalvo digging into the complicated rhythms and melodies of his own making, still finding room for some headbanging every now and again as he keeps time."