Mexican Summer 
Photay Announces ‘Waking Hours’
Waking Hours out June 12th!
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New single “Warmth in the Coldest Acre” out now
It’s 2020, and everyone is exhausted. Things are falling apart, and then there’s the day-to-day stress of just existing in the modern world. Screens are everywhere, we’re all tethered to our phones and social media; trying to keep up with it all seems just as impossible as unplugging altogether.
Like all of us, Photay (a.k.a. Evan Shornstein) struggles with these issues. As a native of Woodstock who grew up surrounded by nature and relative peace, his current life in New York City can feel downright suffocating, yet his latest album finds him facing the problem head on. Entitled Waking Hours, it doesn’t offer any surefire antidotes to the intense pressures of the world around us, but it does present an intriguing proposition: perhaps the first step to making things better is for all of us to stop, take a look around, and ask a few questions.
Listen to “Warmth in the Coldest Acre”
Powered by warm pads, gurgling synths and percolating percussion, “Warmth in the Coldest Acre” was also the first time that Shornstein had ever used Auto-Tune, and while he was initially apprehensive to go there, it lent his vocals a childlike buoyancy that paired brilliantly with the song’s dreamy suite of elastic synths. Like many of Waking Hours‘ best moments, it doesn’t neatly fall into any one category, seamlessly marrying the digital and analog worlds into an enchanting piece of pop-adjacent electronic music, containing a message of hope that many of us could use right now:
On & on you’ll be
Sailing free
On & on you’ll see
Days of peace
On & on you’ll need
Time to breath
On & on you’ll see
Days of peace