Nashville-based artist, Kevin Coleman, is quite adept at taking the traditions of American string band music and mutating them through an experimental lens to create wholly unique sounds and styles. This is especially done well on his upcoming record for Centripetal Force, Imaginary Conversations.

Available for preorder today ahead of its March 19th release date, this record features Coleman stretching out Piedmont blues and other strains of folk music, and leaning into their more drone-based elements and improvisational nature by applying the freeing mindset that could be found in the guitar soli and kosmische musik genres.

Listening to this album makes one easily think of natural environments, of which was unquestionably part of Coleman’s goal (and can be confirmed in the album’s liner notes). You’ll hear synths, guitar lines and mandolin melodies that climb, twist and unfurl in all directions like wild kudzu vines, while fiddles and jaw harps race and skip like wild chased rabbits. You’ll hear some of this on the album’s first track, “Mammut Americanum.” Give it a listen yourself:

If Joseph Allred and The Black Twig Pickers are among your favorites, give this album a try. Preorder your copy on CD, tape or digital today.

-KH