Walt McClements draws deep, emotive catharsis from a raging stillness on On A Painted Ocean. Amidst its dense sonic mosaic, woven with patterned movements and transcendent melodies, the music holds us in place, suspended in its atmosphere. The accordionist and multi-instrumentalist spent years untangling the threads that eventually became this album, writing and recording across various cities, and collaborating with Aurora Nealand and Rachika Nayar. Across seven accordion- and pipe organ-led pieces, On A Painted Ocean balances beauty and quiet, reflection and inflection. It unfolds like a breathing exercise; at times warm and expansive, then drawing back into a cool, controlled inhalation. McClements threads an impossible needle, delivering one of 2025’s early triumphs.
On A Painted Ocean releases on April 4 via Western Vinyl.
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I always like starting at the very beginning. I’d love to hear about some of your earliest memories of music and sound – are there certain things that stand out to you as memorable or formative from when you were younger? What are some of your first memories related to music?
My parents are music lovers and my dad played the piano and harmonica in bands, so I feel like music was abundant in the house while I was growing up. I remember a lot of New Orleans music being played, Dr. John, James Booker, The Meters, but also my dad was really into Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits and I remember finding Roland Kirk records in their collection so there was some more outre stuff around as well. I grew up in Durham, NC and as I got a little older, in high school, there was a lot of music to discover locally, and a good amount of places for all-ages shows. I was mostly hanging out in a sort of anarcho-punk scene but the music tastes were pretty diverse, there was punk and metal and a lot of hip hop, but also everyone loved what we called “pretty music” like Godspeed! you black emperor and Dirty Three. I also worked at a deli with older indie rockers and they’d play me things they thought I should hear as a 15-year-old, I remember listening to Joy Division, Slint, The Ex, and The Birthday Party there for the first time. I feel like it was an exciting time to grow up and have a voracious appetite for hearing new things – this is like late 90s, early 2000s… in that there was a lot of accessibility but still, it was pre-streaming, even pre-itunes, early napster days. It felt really special when someone showed you something you’d never heard before, or made you a tape, or spent the time finding something exciting to hear on the internet. I remember reading something about Harry Partch in a magazine and him sounding so cool –a gay train-hopping composer who made his own instruments – and trying desperately to find recordings but no record store had any and I couldn’t find it online. I went to the University library which had a room full of tape players and headphones and you could check out tapes to listen to. They had some Partch recordings and I went to ask to listen to them and they said I needed to be a student and I remember pleading with them but they wouldn’t budge. Totally frustrating as a teenager, but also so exciting to just imagine what something might sound like in your imagination. Some years later I remember finally getting my hands on a Partch record and it sounding nothing like I thought it would (and honestly, not connecting to it much at the time)!
When did you start playing an instrument? And what prompted your first forays into writing and playing original pieces?
I started taking piano lessons pretty young, when I was six and played saxophone in the school band. I picked up guitar in high school and played in some bands then. We’d write songs together so that’s probably my first taste of having a creative hand in making music. I traveled a bit after high school and was playing mostly banjo and fiddle. I’d gotten into old-time music and was busking a lot while traveling, and eventually ended up in New Orleans when I was 20. I moved there with a very confident friend from North Carolina and she wanted us to start a band – she booked us our first show before we had a practice and then said – we each needed to write 3 songs for it by next week. New Orleans was a really supportive community and that’s where I really started writing a lot. After that band, I formed a sprawling brass-centric band called Why Are We Building Such A Big Ship? I wrote a lot of music for that band, which still was song-based but with a lot of longer instrumental, somewhat orchestral sections. When I moved to Los Angeles I was doing a solo project called Lonesome Leash, and after a lot of touring with that project, I kind of burnt on songwriting in a sense. I’d been doing some performances before the pandemic of just instrumental accordion through effects, and really enjoyed the different space it made… it felt like a bit of a revelation, allowing myself to make music like that. When the pandemic hit I focused on recording that first set of pieces that became “A Hole in the Fence”.
Your new record, On A Painted Ocean, is out soon. The title – which I really love – takes inspiration from Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. What drew you to this particular passage, and how do you see it reflected in this music?
So yeah, the line from the poem is “As idle as a painted ship / Upon a painted ocean” and I think I loved that it sounds relatively pleasant on the surface but is actually quite ominous, describing a ship stuck at sea with no wind. When this record was taking shape and as I was thinking about what the music felt like to me I would always come back to this feeling of a voyage and imagery of ships. Certain songs like “Parade” felt like this slow moving ghostly ship making its way through the clouds. The title track feels like a glistening ocean to me. But also – in the process of making the record the line resonated with me in that I was struggling a bit to find my focus and direction – I felt stuck at sea in a sense.
There’s an exploration of the tension between stillness as tranquility and stagnation. How did you personally experience and navigate these forces while creating this work?
I was on the road most of 2023, touring with Weyes Blood, and kept on thinking that once that album cycle was over and I was home in my studio I’d be able to finish this record, but it’s never quite like that, is it? I set myself a somewhat arbitrary deadline to finish the record and found myself going in circles, having the space and the time to make it but going in a million directions at once, having a hard time finding focus. Questioning every decision – thinking I’d scrap the whole thing and start over… finding that when I did clear my schedule and “buckle down” and force myself to work and not see friends and experience life I’d get stuck. Realizing I needed movement and inspiration to make things – needing balance – not stillness.
What surprised you the most about making this album?
That I managed to finish it! Slightly joking but also seriously. I’d never made a record over this amount of time, fragmented in a sense. I had made so many sketches and experiments in 2022 that I figured would maybe inform my next record – taking a texture from here and a melody from another. But when I went back through things I had made a year or more beforehand I found things I quite liked that I forgot about or things I forgot how I made. Loops that I couldn’t tell if they started from the synth or organ or accordion. The album sort of revealing itself to me was a surprise in a sense.
You returned to New Orleans to complete this record. How did the energy of Carnival and your time in the city shape the final work?
I had been planning that trip for a while, thinking it would be a good way to celebrate finishing the record and getting off of the busy year of touring. And then… I didn’t finish the record in time. I almost scrapped the trip, but thankfully still went, and brought a small setup to record on to assuage my guilt. It ended up really being the best thing I could have done – running around all day, seeing beautiful things and sounds people had made. It makes you remember why you create things in the first place. Sometimes I’d come home from a parade or party in the middle of the night and start recording. New Orleans for all its chaotic and ecstatic energy also always feels very grounding for me, as it is where I sort of developed my sense of music and why I make it.
Tracks like “Clattering,” for example, build from subtle textures to a euphoric climax. How do you think about dynamics and tension in your compositions?
I love a good build and think I’m always in some ways looking for a way to get to that ecstatic, euphoric place. I was trying to temper those impulses slightly on this record, or looking for different ways to achieve making a piece feel complete. Cloud Prints for example – I feel like Aurora Nealand’s saxophone achieves that huge feeling while allowing the piece to be relatively sparse (for me). And a few of the tracks I tried to keep at a simmer rather than letting them explode.
Collaboration became an essential part of finishing the album. What did Rachika Nayar and Aurora Nealand bring to the project that you wouldn’t have achieved alone?
I think reacting to another person’s energy allowed me to find joy again in finishing this record.
With Rachika – she’s been a huge inspiration for me trying to find my voice in the world of processing and manipulating sounds on a computer. Her records resonate with me emotionally in such a direct way and seeing how she uses technology to get to these powerful soundscapes that still feel very connected to her instrument was a really useful entry point for me thinking about how I wanted to approach things as a relative newcomer to using a computer in music. So – to have her take a track of mine and add her production to it was really special for me and feels like it really made it shine.
She also really helped me out by lending her ears to some works in progress – and in fact, she first suggested I have some guests on the pieces during a studio visit.
With Aurora – we have a really long history of playing music together over the last 20 years in so many different configurations and circumstances. She’s one of my favorite musicians and when I was back in New Orleans I was watching a brass band she was in play at a relatively uninspiring club. She took her first solo and as always it was like the world froze, time stopped. Thinking about Rachika’s suggestions to have guests on the record – I asked if she’d do some recording and it made me so happy – I feel like she really elevated everything she played on to heights I couldn’t achieve on my own.
You encountered creative block while making this album. What helped you push through that period of feeling stuck?
Collaboration, walking away, taking the pressure off of myself. In some ways it was less a creative block and more of chronic indecision – my last record was mostly pieces I’d conceived of in a live setting, and I was just setting them to a record in the best way I could. This record was getting created as I recorded which is somewhat new to me, and having endless options I would get lost. I’d spend a day recording 90 trumpet tracks and then be like – none of this is working. I really see how useful a producer can be, just to keep you on track and not let you overthink things. It was a learning experience for sure, and hopefully, I’ll go into the next record with some new skills to not get overwhelmed!
And, as always, to close – what are some of your favorite sounds in the world?
Musicians practicing inside their houses as you walk by on the sidewalk – train whistles in the distance – waves on a rocky beach tossing the stones around – coyotes howling in the middle of the night – the deafening cicada wall of sound.
Foxy Digitalis depends on our awesome readers to keep things rolling. Pledge your support today via our Patreon or subscribe to The Jewel Garden. You can also make a one-time donation via Ko-fi.
