Lanterna

sitions gallop along pastoral backroads and across desert plains, open to the sky and gathering light like a suncatcher.” —John Diliberto, Echoes

An Album 30 Years in the Making
Champaign, Illinois’ Lanterna are pleased to announce the release of their seventh album, Hidden Drives, available June 4, 2021, on Badman Recording Co. The new album is guitarist Henry Frayne’s latest offering as Lanterna, which began as an instrumental side project some 30 years ago. Since the 1980s, Frayne has played in Champaign bands such as Lodestone Destiny, The Syndicate, ¡Ack-Ack!, Area and The Moon Seven Times. The past experiences in those bands influenced every song on Hidden Drives as it has with previous Lanterna albums. The Story Behind Hidden Drives
For more than 30 years, Frayne has maintained a notebook and series of cassette tapes filled with song ideas. The songs that constitute Hidden Drives are ideas that might have needed a bit more time, give or take a decade, to come together. For example, “Maine 262” needed a final section, which came about with Frayne accidentally striking an open low E string while trying a new chord pattern. The acoustic-guitar-driven “Chagrin Boulevard” existed as a fragment at the end of a cassette tape for many years, with Frayne relying on his memory to finish the song. Lastly, the title track was just three lush chords played on an old analog synth. Frayne says, “I had to figure out how to arrange the chords on the guitar to retain those ringing notes and to imagine the twists and turns of the rest of the song.”

“Hidden Drives features more electric guitar and synthesizer than previous efforts,” explains Frayne, and he adds, “Most of the songs were written on an old Gibson SG, with or without cascading digital echoes suggesting additional harmonies and melody lines.”

As with 2015’s Backyards, Hidden Drives was pondered and formulated by Frayne while traveling between Illinois and his adopted second home state of Maine. One winding stretch of backroads in Knox County, Maine, called “Buttermilk Lane,” sports an inordinate number of twists and turns and hidden driveways with signs warning of HIDDEN DRIVES. It only took a few summers to realize that a perfect album title was literally flashing by around every turn. Lanterna Through the Years
In May 1991, Frayne met with The Moon Seven Times' Brendan Gamble to record drums for what would become Lanterna’s self-titled debut. At first a cassette release, then an LP released in Greece, then a CD, then a reissue on CD, the 1990s saw the same Lanterna album released again and again. When Lanterna came to the attention of Badman Recording’s Dylan Magierek in 2000, the new decade saw four new Lanterna albums before it was half-over. Then, in 2015, Badman released Backyards, with a vinyl edition licensed through Bruce Licher’s Independent Project Records. Badman will issue Hidden Drives on vinyl, CD and digital download. When Lanterna first began working with Badman, Frayne enlisted the help of producer Mike Brosco at Waterworks Audio in Champaign, as well as Chicagoan Eric Gebow (Blue Man Group, Mouth Captain), who would drum on Lanterna’s Highways and Desert Ocean and tour the U.S. In 2018, with some songs on Hidden Drives already fleshed out, Gebow laid down drums for half of the album’s 10 songs. Frayne says, “As the day played out, Eric identified “Redwoods” as a song that needed drums. Being a song with modulated, looping guitar figures, I hadn’t thought that drums could be integrated without a blinking bank of computers. Brosco brought up the tracks for “Redwoods” and Eric performed the lush, driving beat that now defines the song. For me it evokes the feeling of driving down tree-lined streets after a summer rain shower.”

For five songs on Hidden Drives, Frayne asked Brosco to experiment to create remixes to bring the album to a total of 15 tracks. “This gives everyone a chance to enjoy instrumental parts that might otherwise go unnoticed on the more upbeat songs,” adds Frayne. The Visuals of Hidden Drives
Boston-based artist Kevin Salemme has been taking photos with a band like Lanterna in mind since before Lanterna was a project. Salemme shopping a photo/music book idea led to Rykodisc’s reissue of Lanterna’s first CD in 1998, a happy accident that continues to amuse Frayne and Salemme 20 years later. Frayne, a longtime fan of Licher’s design work and a musical collaborator (Licher’s band Scenic and Lanterna toured together in 1996), asked Licher to design the album artwork for Hidden Drives. As with previous Lanterna albums, the music that was created is perfectly complemented by the artists who provided the imagery and design. Hidden Drives

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