All the Way, the latest full-length from local ambient project TALsounds, aka Natalie Chami of experimental group Good Willsmith, opens with gentle synth notes, unearthly and largely indecipherable vocals, and what sounds like the gentle pitter-patter of leaves and branches rustling in the wind. Good Willsmith member and Hausu Mountain cohoncho Max Allison sent me All the Way at the end of April, and though I can’t recall connecting the dots at the time, the opening song, “Only One,” and some of the other tracks on the immersive All the Way have elements reminiscent of spring, of nature slowly appearing out of winter’s shadow. What I knew at the time was that I immediately liked All the Way, which Hausu Mountain will release on Tuesday.
- Courtesy of TALsounds Facebook/Ashley Ayarza
- TALsounds
The schools she went to in Canada didn’t offer music in schools, and once she got to the States she joined a choir class. In high school she got hooked in the music scenes in Falls Church and nearby D.C., and started a band that she describes as cheesy folk-rock—they’d play wherever they could, including on the waterfront in Georgetown. “We put on a show on one of the docks and it started sinking ’cause we had all these people,” Chami says. “It was fun!”
She honed in on her sound by practicing daily and recording herself once a week. When she performed at the Whistler for the record release show for her first full-length, 2013’s Skyface, she says her disarming, sometimes delicate performance took some people by surprise. “People were like, ‘What, when did you develop this?’ And I was like, ‘Dude, I practice every day,’” Chami says.
