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The Massachusetts multi-instrumentalist and producer takes us on an eclectic and expansive album trip on Friday, February 23

NOW PLAYING: Listen to ‘Dryas’ via Spotify

Visualizers for ‘MarchToVictory’ (February 7) and ‘IntoTheMirror’ (February 14) debut ahead of the album’s release

BOSTON, Mass. [February 23, 2024] -- It’s often said that no one listens to full albums anymore. So Jon Chesbro has delivered an artist’s life hack, merging all eight tracks on his forthcoming album Dryas into one singular listening experience.

It’s a bit of a journey, an expansive evolution of sound and atmosphere that finds the Massachusetts multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer exploring the more experimental side of electronic music through aural dalliances with indie, jazz, blues, synth-pop, and other genres. Whether consumed as one long continuous sonic journey or broken up into eight songs that emerge like chapters, the mostly instrumental Dryas is an outlier in today’s music world, and Chesbro is finally ready to set it free on Friday, February 23.

“I've been waiting for this for way too long,” admits Chesbro. “So to finally get this album done and feel good about it makes me feel complete – and happy that I have a full project to share. If you lay back and listen to this record as one continuous track, it'll put you through space, no question. But if you’re looking for a specific feeling in a song, you're likely to find that too.”

For Chesbro, every note is a brushstroke on the canvas of emotion. And while Dryas is a departure from his work as guitarist for the Massachusetts band Derek Smith and the Cosmic Vultures, Chesbro is excited to showcase a new complexity and depth in his solo musical compositions. Lead single “MarchToVictory”, featuring Smith on guest vocals, dropped on New Year’s Day, and a pair of visualizers, the aforementioned “MarchToVictory” and “IntoTheMirror,” go live this month ahead of the album drop.

“It all kinda happened organically,” Chesbro says of Dryas. “I was in this really creative mindset for a long time. When inspiration strikes, I don't stop, I just let the floodgates open up. From a writing perspective, these songs came from desperation. I only had a laptop. A guitar and an interface. I used to have this nice big studio with speakers but as I kept chasing dreams my studio got smaller. I had to create with what little I had.”

Chesbro wrote, mixed, mastered, produced Dryas himself, and performed all its instrumentation across its eight tracks. His musical journey began in the church as a young child, singing hymns in the choir and listening to his mother and grandmother play together on the keyboard and organ. With his mother’s urging and support, his life took shape and his personality was developed around playing the guitar.

Whether as a songwriter or producer, for Chesbro, music is a very physiological thing. He compares working out a song to therapy. “It's an extension of me that I can tend to describe with a taste or a feeling,” he admits. “It's like when people see colors when they hear sound; I do that sometimes but it's mostly a feeling on my skin or a taste in my mouth. I love textures in music and you'll find a lot of that in Dryas.”

From the atmospheric, string-laden soundscapes of “CherryBlossom” to the more upbeat and funk-leaning “SpeedOfLight,” Chesbro cycles through his creative rolodex with relative ease, each song blending into the next and further establishing his core identity. It’s a wide-ranging and eclectic spectrum of sounds, all linked together by Chesbro as the core conductor, blending modern electronics and production with an old-school songwriting sensibility.

“One day I snapped,” Chesbro admits, “and said ‘Fuck it. I don't care what people think anymore. I'm an artist. I need to share my art.’ It's not meant for everyone to like but for the people who choose to explore something new.”

Even the title has a pointed depth to it, as Dryas has a few origins of meaning, both of which converge to illuminate the feelings and emotions that helped lead to its creation. The record is named both after the last cataclysmic event on Earth, between roughly 12,900 and 11,600 years ago, that ushered in a return to glacial conditions, and the flower that miraculously grows in the Arctic tundra.

“The title is kinda deep, actually,” Chesbro says. “The younger dryas is the last cataclysmic event on Earth, and dryas is also a flower that grows in harsh conditions. It's like chaos and beauty wrapped in one. I feel like the cinematic sounds create this sort of universe within the album. I chose that name because I feel like it represents me coming out of my own chaos and releasing something beautiful in the world.”

And how they respond to it is up to them. And that holds true for whether the listener absorbs it in full and uninterrupted, or cherry picks their favorite songs and skips around within the record. “I want people to listen to this music with an open mind,” Chesbro concludes. “Each song I try to create an image. A feeling. A texture. Something to connect a sound with a physical feeling or moment.”

Where the listener goes next is up to them.

‘Dryas’ production credits:

Written, mixed, mastered, produced and performed by Jon Chesbro

Derek Smith provides vocals on “MarchToVictory”

‘Dryas’ album artwork:

Jon Chesbro crafts an escapist mood of experimental electronic-pop in ‘Dryas’

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