Caseyland
Tuckahoe, New York, United States | Established. Jan 01, 1998 | SELF
Music
Press
Caseyland is the solo project of Virginia-based Casey Cichowicz, who produces an intoxicating form of darkly infectious synth-pop. Cichowicz’s creative process is inspired by Brian Eno’s lateral thinking technique Oblique Strategies, where cryptic prompts like “What to increase? What to reduce?” and “Work at a different speed” inspire artists to overcome creative blocks. Additionally prompted by “vintage synths, drum machines, and dark nights in the basement”, Cichowicz explores a calmly contagious approach throughout stellar new track “Secrets”, where his understated vocals glide alongside squiggly synths, soft keys, and nocturnal guitar twangs. These squiggly synths enter and exit sporadically, the emphasis alternating between the consuming vocal melody and atmosphere-building elements like the Chromatics-like guitar stylings and hypnotic drum machine use. It’s a sound I’m definitely hooked by. - Obscure Sound
Caseyland, the project of Virginia based Casey Cichowicz has just released his new single ‘Secrets’, a rather dichotomous track that rests on a languid funky bass line despite the understated and rather pensive nature of the composition around it. Mournful at times, the melancholy is broken by celestial like synths further illustrating the hydra like feel. Listen below. - Indie30
Discography
2020: Everything Was Fine, Then It Got Better
2002: The Barbarism of Beauty
1999: Caseyland
More albums, EPs and singles on Bandcamp
Streaming on Apple Music, Spotify, Soundcloud, & Pandora
Visit Caseyland.com for more information.
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Bio
Casey Cichowicz, recording and performing as Caseyland, has been fascinated with music and technology since childhood. Inspired by his father's Laurie Anderson records, at the age of eight Casey put his early piano and violin lessons to work by constructing his own version of Anderson’s tape-bow violin with his Erector set and a broken Walkman to create his own found-sound music projects in the garage. Later he made use of a home karaoke machine to overdub and add effects to his songs. Armed with a Tascam four-track recorder and a flanger or two, his first lo-fi recordings emerged. These days, there’s a lot more gear, but the process and style remains uniquely self-produced.
Caseyland is currently performing solo, using an array of synths, effects, drum machines, and live guitar and bass. Using live looping and sequencing techniques, his solo show is both intimately performed and grandly orchestrated.
Casey's musical tastes are many, but considers artists such as The Cure, The Smiths, New Order, Brian Eno, Elvis Costello and Underworld to be among his earliest formative influences. He writes his music mostly in the context of recording - an unusual sound, a lyrical device, a melodic earworm might all be the start of a song - and he employs the creative prompts called Oblique Strategies developed by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt in his solo recordings.
The Caseyland recordings have drawn from a variety of genres, but are unified by a sort of joyful melancholy, a tendency towards the melodramatic, abstruse but personal lyrics, and experimentation with a growing collection of musical instruments and recording tools.
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