Lost Trail

Lost Trail is the experimental music project of husband and wife duo Zachary Corsa and Denny Wilkerson Corsa. Not to be mistaken with the great beer from Vermont, Long Trail, nor the loss of more than one trail. Named after an actual trail lost in overgrowth, Lost Trail’s music marries the aesthetics of the woods with industrial processes, sounding both organic and mechanic. The couple play antique musical equipment alongside lo-fi and marginalized recording technology, such as tape recorders, microcassettes and reel-to-reel machines, utilized as instruments in their own right, with the intention of capturing a sense of atmosphere and landscape, in both man-made and natural, wild environments. Capitalizing on the potential of the internet, they have made many more recordings available via their bandcamp than is perhaps advisable. Still, the seemingly continual output can spark creativity, and this seems to be the case here. More to the point, it seems to be the point of the whole endeavor, its raison d’être . Corsa has devoted himself to music full time, and, trained as neither musician nor technician approaches music thoughtfully and rather unconventionally, like a writer composing an imagist poem with sound.

Eidolons is the least melodic of Lost Trail’ work, comprised of mainly treated field-recordings with sparse piano and acoustic guitar. The couple had been on tour this past summer, and Eidolons is the result of that experience. Rather than approach the album as a coherent whole, each short track is better conceived as a stand-alone poem, though thematically they all add form a narrative.

Stream the album on Bandcamp and pay what you wish for download. - SSG Music

The kids-playing-in-a-wind-tunnel style of field recording on hand in this track from Lost Trail comes off very eerie and dreamlike, one of those third person shooter POVs where you're watching the back of your head saunter past the wreckage that is the follies of your youth. The five-minute excursion is actually more like three separate segments, a triptych if you will, and where the first two hollow out a point of melancholia and memory, the final minute closes with an acoustic guitar plucking brightly to wash out any pervading gloom.

"Hinterlands I" comes off of their album Eerie Light, Eerie Wood, a limited release from the husband and wife duo of Zachary Corsa and Denny Wilkerson Corsa. - Impose Magazine

Among a boatload of templated spam I stumble upon a personalized email from a husband and wife duo recording under the name Lost Trail. Zachary Corsa and Denny Wilkerson Corsa create delicate soundscapes utilizing lo-fi and obsolete equipment (reel-to-reel machines, microcassettes and tape recorders) along with antique musical contraptions, to create “a sense of atmosphere and landscape, in both man-made and natural, wild environments.” The seven pieces on the album are full of nostalgic guitar drones and old de-tuned piano keys, layered over obscure samples and field recordings. Some of the compositions remind me a bit of the softer side of Godspeed You! Black Emperor – the tracks where a melody slowly soars over an apocalyptic message heard through an old radio. Additional industrial sounds, noise, breaking dishes, and even some World War II sirens, create a collage of avant-garde patches stitched together into a fuzzy blanket for a restless ghost. These monochrome sounds float in the air like confetti of an abstract painting, until they slowly settle down on the creaking wooden floor, and as if by magic, arrange themselves into one solid piece. In his introduction, Zachary tells me about the couple’s creative environment – “We record in the darker corners of our 101-year old historic home in Burlington, North Carolina, and the moods of this town and this house very much affect what we create. Common themes include faded industry, manmade decay, suburban sprawl, horror cinema, trains, the forest/mountains, the supernatural, winter, fall, photography, film, and the past/nostalgia.” Eerie Light, Eerie Woods is another self-released album on Lost Trail’s own label, Wood Thrush Field Recordings. Make sure to dig deeper through Lost Trail’s bandcamp discography to discover even darker pieces… - Headphone Commute

"Lost Trail is a project to kind of sit back and take in on a rainy day, the atmosphere of the music is dense and during times like that it just soaks in more. Luckily, I had a moment like that yesterday while listening to their collaboration with ambient-folk musician Dave Watkins and the album really, really impressed me.

Post-rock with a very strong folky, lo-fi, ambiance here, it has that blend of genres that I love so much. The best moments are during 'Mom Jeans and a Bottle of Fuzzy Naval'when the field recordings and drone grace our ears filled with nostalgic beauty. The album is a real gem and really gives the listener something to do with it's density."

-Prog Archives/The Truth's 'Album of the Week' Blog (http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=76910&PN=3) - Prog Archives

"...cinematic ambient'n'piano music...in the vein of Budd and Eno as well as tons of millennial drama/horror films, Lost Trail is not to be missed."

- The Nightlight - The Nightlight (Chapel Hill)

http://www.silbermedia.com/qrd/archives/46zachary.html - Silber Media/QRD