Premiere: Ultra Contra Share New Single 'White Shore'
January 17, 2024
Ultra Contra is the new project of Seattle-based songwriter, guitarist and producer Justin Schmidt. Schmidt has cut his teeth playing in various garage bands and experimental outfits over the years, but Ultra Contra is his latest solo foray, which finds him drawing from the atmospheric and exploratory corners of art pop. This commitment to a carefully cultivated mood and texture is one of the project's defining elements.
Schmidt explains, “I've always had a vibes-first approach to making music. I can't commit to a song idea if I don't have a clear picture of the overall sound and feel of what it will end up being. Maybe this works the other way around. But it's like this finished song is being played in the next room and you can hear the general shape of it, but it's blurry and muffled. My process is to try to break down that wall as much as I can to figure out how to make a real song that matches the impression I have of it.”
Schmidt debuted last year with the single “Walk the Terminal” and today he's back with another track, “White Shore,” premiering on Under the Radar.
While “White Shore” evokes some of the same dreamy haze as Schmidt's previous single, it also comes packed with a slew of funky guitars, catchy melodies, and hypnotic beats. As Schmidt says, he deliberately tried to create a midnight beach setting, an element that runs throughout the track. The propulsive undercurrent and waves of guitar contrast with Schmidt's shadowy vocals and the song's looming sinister edge, with lingering hints of doom admitting to the track's murky atmosphere.
Schmidt says of the track, “'White Shore' came together from two separate ideas – one was this musical theme I was starting inspired by a late-night beach scene, the other was a story idea about someone who had passed away who it can. i don't live anymore The story is ultimately tragic and this helped me understand a more serious meaning behind fantasizing about some heavenly beach somewhere. There are the places we find ourselves living everyday, and then there are the places we imagine – places where all the noise and dangers of life are shut out. Whether it's some idyllic mountain grove or a beautiful house or a White Coast, we see ourselves there and will always feel that instinctive pull, even just a little bit, to get up and leave everything behind and just run for it. But everyone who does that has to pass through the real world on the way there. And running to your imagined best place through an indifferent world that doesn't care where you're going can lead to all kinds of dangers. But for some people the pull is irresistible and they chase that new life, their personal green forest or blue mountain top or White Coast. And the fact that not everyone makes it doesn't stop the rest of us from wanting to go there any less.”
Check out the song below.
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