Tag: Katzin Buckaroo

Katzin releases “Cowboy” ahead of his new album due on Friday the 13th.

Credit: Gabe Ginsburg

This Friday, Katzin will release his debut LP Buckaroo on Mexican Summer. The project of the New York based songwriter Zion Battle, who is just 20 years old, Katzin broke ground on his first album the summer after he graduated from high school.

Raised on skillful storytellers like Bruce Springsteen and Tracy Chapman, Battle started weaving narratives from his first year of adulthood into a collection of new music. Channelling the expansive gravitas of Springsteen’s Nebraska, while drawing from the warm, homespun atmospherics of early Orchid Tapes releases, the record incorporates symbols of the mythologized American West – cowboys, horses, vast deserts, rolling plains, ancient rock formations – to trace Battle’s leap out of adolescence in all its unsteady shine.

Katzin has so far shared three singles from the record “Anna,” “Wild Horses,” and  “Nantucket,” and today he’s sharing a final single from the record, a track called “Cowboy.” 

When Battle began work on Buckaroo, with collaborator and producer Max Morgen, he had just spent most of the summer in Europe, and came back to the United States inspired to explore what it means to be an American at this particular moment in history. As with several other tracks on the record, “Cowboy” is a song that spills out into questions of identity and belonging in a nation that might still be too young to know what it wants to be.

The track was born in Max Morgen’s kitchen during an especially fruitful songwriting session. “We had about six or seven tunes for the album already, and we wanted a standout, shiny, loud song,” says Zion Battle, aka Katzin. “So we sat down and wrote ‘Cowboy’ together. It felt like we were really in lockstep. It just came out so seamlessly. The kick drum on that song is actually the sound of my boots banging on the wooden deck in his backyard.” A standout on Buckaroo, “Cowboy” thunders with the quiet/loud dynamics of peak indie rock like Pavement and Pixies, arcing into its crescendo with the confidence and velocity of a Mustang hurtling down the interstate.

To mark the release of the record Katzin has announced a hometown release show at Nightclub 101 that will take place on March 11th.

Keep your mind open.

[Ride on over to the subscription box, hombre.]

[Thanks to Tom at Terrorbird Media.]

Katzin releases wild new single – “Nantucket.”

Credit: Gabe Ginsburg
The summer after he graduated from high school, Battle broke ground on his first album as Katzin. He had just spent most of the summer in Europe, and came back to the United States inspired to explore what it means to be an American at this particular moment in history. What stories cling to people born and raised in this infinitely complex, haunted country, and what responsibilities do we have to them? Buckaroo swirls around these heated questions like smoke from a campfire at dusk. 
Together with collaborator and producer Max Morgen, Battle drove from Los Angeles to Joshua Tree to start recording songs he’d written the previous spring. “It was a really anxious time. We were both heading off to college, getting ready to leave our homes and move to new states,” he says. “We packed up Max’s Subaru Impreza and set up a DIY recording studio in a cabin. It was really hot, and we were stuck inside. By isolating ourselves, we were able to capture this raw creative energy. It feels like we made a love letter to our childhoods.” 
“Nantucket” captures the continent traversing ambition of the album, as Battle explains: 
“’Nantucket’ is about a comedown, sobering up, perhaps washing up on a familiar shore. Several coastlines are implied in the lyrics, both east and west. It’s also about Meghan Trainor because she’s obviously the only girl who’s really from Nantucket. It’s all about that bass, no treble.”

In February, Mexican Summer-signee Katzin will release his debut LP Buckaroo. The project of the New York based songwriter Zion Battle, Katzin’s debut draws upon symbols of the mythologized American West – cowboys, horses, vast deserts, rolling plains, ancient rock formations – to trace that leap from adolescence to adulthood in all its unsteady shine. 


Surging with rolling drums, filigreed synthesizers, and guitars that flip from a whisper to a thunder roll on a dime, Buckaroo renders the beauty of North America through a deceptively nonchalant electroacoustic collage. “One of our main goals was to make the album sound like the desert,” says Battle. “We talked about that a lot: How do we make the soundscape reflect the landscape?” Throughout the record, Battle blends the surreal wit of Pavement with the expansive gravitas of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, all while drawing from the warm, homespun atmospherics of early Orchid Tapes releases. These songs arc like contrails across the biggest sky you’ve ever seen. 


Katzin has so far shared two singles from the record “Anna” and “Wild Horses,” and today he is sharing a third, a track called “Nantucket” that is premiering with FLOOD. 

WATCH THE VIDEO FOR “NANTUCKET”

The summer after he graduated from high school, Battle broke ground on his first album as Katzin. He had just spent most of the summer in Europe, and came back to the United States inspired to explore what it means to be an American at this particular moment in history. What stories cling to people born and raised in this infinitely complex, haunted country, and what responsibilities do we have to them? Buckaroo swirls around these heated questions like smoke from a campfire at dusk. 
Together with collaborator and producer Max Morgen, Battle drove from Los Angeles to Joshua Tree to start recording songs he’d written the previous spring. “It was a really anxious time. We were both heading off to college, getting ready to leave our homes and move to new states,” he says. “We packed up Max’s Subaru Impreza and set up a DIY recording studio in a cabin. It was really hot, and we were stuck inside. By isolating ourselves, we were able to capture this raw creative energy. It feels like we made a love letter to our childhoods.” 


“Nantucket” captures the continent traversing ambition of the album, as Battle explains: 


“’Nantucket’ is about a comedown, sobering up, perhaps washing up on a familiar shore. Several coastlines are implied in the lyrics, both east and west. It’s also about Meghan Trainor because she’s obviously the only girl who’s really from Nantucket. It’s all about that bass, no treble.”

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe before you go.]

[Thanks to Tom at Terrorbird Media.]