Phourist & the Photons

“For me, songs are like a musical exorcism—they come out screaming and I interpret them later on,” says Nick Phourist, of the Louisville, Kentucky-based quartet Phourist and the Photons. The band’s aptly-titled latest, We’re All Born Screaming (out August 2nd on Gubbey Records), offers forth a viscerally distilled edition of the group’s stately and tuneful indie-rock allowing for maximum cathartic impact.

It’s no surprise Nick is cagey about the meaning of his songs, preferring the listener to have his or her own interpretations. Yet, he does acknowledge that a death in his family last year played a big role in the album’s creation. He also cites existential angst, and day-in-life struggles as artistic fodder.

Phourist and The Photons is known for its non-linear songcraft which includes winding musical passages, and adventurous arrangements flanking undeniable pop-rock hooks. Previously, the quartet has issued one album, but We’re All Born Screaming represents the first album of the band’s current and stable lineup. Phourist and the Photons is Nick Phourist Hill, vocals, piano, guitar, songwriting; Justin Perez, bass, various other musical contributions; and Andrew Critchelow guitar, textures; and Scott Boice, drums, percussion.

Though he prefers to keep his artistic intentions close to his vest, Nick does reveal his thoughts surrounding the band’s name. “I like that it has a nerdy sci-fi vibe, and an old school ‘Buddy Holly & The Crickets’ thing to it. I also love a good alliteration,” he says.

Today Glide is excited to offer an exclusive early listen of We’re All Born Screaming, an album that offers forth a user-friendly edition of Phourist and the Photons. With distinctive piano as a cornerstone of the band’s sound, the album is reminiscent of acts like Tori Amos, Koji Kondo, Dead Can Dance, and Elton John. At the same time, their sound is completely unique as they temper prog-rock with sharp pop tunesmithing, and the tunes are more viscerally emotive. Throughout the album’s nine songs we get everything from intimate piano ballads and atmospheric acoustic singer-songwriter moments to dreamy indie rock and heavy blues riffing.

Band leader Nick Phourist Hill describes the journey behind the album:

“We were but a wee band when we started to record ‘We’re All Born Screaming’. We’d played together as the current quartet maybe three times before we headed to the studio. A lot of the songs, however, I had written years prior. I think the combination of freshness and ancientness gave the record a vibe like it was the beginning of a journey that had been in preparation for years. I couldn’t be more proud of the piece as a whole, and the team that made it happen.” - Glide Magazine

Phourist and Photons — ‘Tired of my Medication’
“Tired of My Medication” starts off so clean and austere, initially just piano and vocals, tipping the listener off that Phourist and Photons are confident in their message. That sparse instrumentation soon breaks into a very subtle string or synth accompaniment, building even more so after the lyric, “I’m tired of my medication / I want to hear the music play around me.” There is a quiet build that leads into a dense crescendo of sounds, the singer’s voice strident in the message that finding something more than the deadening effect of the medication — symbolic or otherwise — is crucial to living life to the fullest. - LEO Weekly

It’s time for a change. That’s the essential message that can be drawn from “Tired of my Medication,” a recently-released single by indie rock band, Phourist & the Photons, now streaming exclusively on Atwood Magazine.

Perhaps this general sentiment can be extended to the group themselves: after several years of floating around the local rock scene in their native Louisville, Kentucky, the time may have come to move on to bigger, better things. Who knows where “Tired of my Medication,” and its accompanying record, We’re All Born Screaming, may take them in that regard.

Phourist & the Photons emerged in 2012 as a solo project conceived by Nick Phourist Hill (whose middle name serves as his pseudonym), who eventually decided “the more, the mightier,” and recruited several other musicians to come along with him. Critics have appreciated how this creation expansion allowed Phourist “to create a larger sound; a theatrical, melodic, yet stripped-down affair, experimenting with neo-classical themes tinged with rock.”

2015’s In Infinite Indigo was hailed as “a firey and thrilling lift-off,” and several of the debut record’s eight tracks, including “Here’s Some Moonlight for Your Day,” made their way onto local radio in Louisville. The follow-up, We’re All Born Screaming (out August 2, 2019), represents a major creative stride for the group. After having added and subtracted a number of bandmates in recent years, the upcoming release “represents the first album of the band’s écurrent and stable lineup”– Phourist, bassist Justin Perez, guitarist Andrew Critchelow, and drummer Scott Boice.

Some personal troubles have fueled the content of We’re All Born Screaming— most of all the recent death in the family Phourist has experienced– but “Tired of my Medication” exemplifies the therapeutic value of songwriting. “I remember writing this song with kinda what felt like my last breath of the moment,” he explains. “It was a gloomy day (which has a real beauty to it) and my whole self was flooded with this overwhelming “feeling,” which I couldn’t even begin to describe with words, so I worked through it on my piano. Like therapy or something. Perhaps other folks can relate to the feeling when they hear/feel it. It’s that old cliché: a whole song that pretty much completely spewed out in like 5-10 minutes!”

“Tired of my Medication” achieves a hypnotic effect through the echoes applied to Phourist’s melodic wailing, as the lyrics lay bare his longing for companionship:

Black belly of cloud, belly of rain
I’m under your spell, I’m feelin’ your pain
If you know what I mean,
you know what I’m sayin’
Then sing it with me,
it’s better than prayin’

The song hits a crescendo about two-and-a-half minutes in as the singer’s voice picks up and the piano playing, already quite forceful, noticeably intensifies. From there on, Phourist’s lyricism only gets more esoteric: “Oh alien light from miles away, remindin’ me how the memory stays, you’re out there somewhere just Dragon slayin.’” Lines of such a nature live up to the group’s own description as “a band you can decidedly not pigeonhole; a fresh respite from those unwilling to step outside the the boxes they’ve designed for themselves.”

When it all comes to a close moments later, Phourist has achieved a single in which his multiple talents as a musician and rich vocalist have collided in stirring fashion. The casual listener will quickly come to side with the band as they prepare for their seven-date tour and release of their new full-length album in the coming months. Phourist & the Photons’ We’re All Born Screaming is out August 2nd! - Atwood Magazine

Louisville’s Phourist & The Photons are back with a brand-spankin’ new single, “We’re All Born Screaming”.

Though a short song (less than three minutes), the track carries a bevy of dynamic sounds and emotional weight. Driving keys and perfectly syncopated drums move the track beautifully under Nick Phourist Hill’s rich voice as guitars whir in and out. Small layers of group vocals back up Hill’s crooning cries of “We’re all born screaming” as it rockets into the void.

“We’re All Born Screaming” is out digitally everywhere tomorrow (March 8th)! Phourist & The Photons will be releasing their new album this summer, until then, follow the band on Facebook. - PlaylistPlay

Regardless of how an artist starts writing a song, the experience or observation that inspired the words, it will always be open to interpretation. Tragedy, love, existence, acceptance…they all can play huge roles in crafting lyrical emotion. The new single, “We’re All Born Screaming”, from Louisville, Kentucky’s Phourist & the Photons, embodies all four of these ingredients. Wrapped in a sweeping and theatrical indie-rock masterstroke, vocalist Nick ‘Phourist’, has a certain blend of Ben Folds and Ezra Koenig range as he recounts a period of struggle. And whatever realities, turmoil the storyteller was working through…is open, for translation. Make it your own.

The band has a slew of upcoming Spring and Summer tour dates and has announced a new album has been written. - Global Texan Chronicles

Long time favorite Louisville indie rock quartet Phourist and the Photons are back with a great new single! We’re All Born Screaming is a tasty preview of their forthcoming album, due later this year. With the new title track, the band’s prog-rock tendencies are tempered by sharp pop song crafting, and we’re loving the sound of it. - 91.9 WFPK Radio

Phourist and the Photons, fronted by local songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Nick Hill, has worn a lot of musical hats in the band’s short life. Quirky tunes like “The Wave and the Powers That Be” might cast the trio (at the moment, at least) as an indie-pop band. But the new eight-song album, “In Infinite Indigo” (out April 10), has the band in a different space. At times, the songs become gentle piano instrumentals; you’ll almost think you’re listening to a music box. But suddenly, the rest of the band will kick in, and suddenly it’s an avant-garde, rock-meets-jazz vibe. It ebbs and flows between serene and frantic. And forget verses, bridges and choruses — Hill, whose key musical influences at an early age were film soundtracks — writes in movements. Well worth a shot if something different is what you seek. - LEO Weekly

Originally, the video for “The Wave and the Powers That Be” was going to be about a guy falling into a puddle and discovering a strange, underwater world.

“Every time I see a puddle,” says Phourist and the Photons front man Nick Hill, “I imagine you could fall through it.”

But filming a mud puddle posed some problems, so Hill opted for a mason jar of water. From there, his stop-motion animation story concept came together into a three-minute underwater adventure that at moments seems playful and fun and at others is downright creepy. The frenetic song that serves as the soundtrack, highlighted by Hill’s startling and urgent vocal delivery, only adds to the effect.

“It could scare children,” he says, then smiles a shy smile. “It’s creepy, yet kind of cute at the same time.”

Creepy and cute. This is what happens when a visual artist crosses over into music, and vice versa. Hill has feet squarely in both camps. The video, which seems to be over in a heartbeat when you watch it, actually took two weeks’ worth of 10-hour days to film.

“That was a lot shorter than I thought it was going to take, honestly,” Hill says. “I’ve seen stop-motion movies, and those usually take, like, a couple of years. I kind of got lost in it. … I had fun doing it, so it didn’t seem like a long time. That’s the thing about music and art and stuff, because it doesn’t seem like it’s taking a long time.”

Of course, he also painted and designed the characters and backdrops and edited the video, which also figured into his investment. Between that, writing, rehearsing and playing frequent shows with his band – which also includes Adam Crowhorn (guitar, bass, air, backing vocals), Cher Von (bass, percussion, ambient sound, backing vocals), Scott Boice (drums) and rotating member James Bohr (guitar, percussion) – it’s hard to imagine he would have time for such a project. Such is the life of an artist. And visionary.

The video for “The Wave” is actually a microcosm of a larger story Hill envisions, one which began a bit differently than it ended up.

“The other idea was to have the story be from the perspective of a puddle who wanted to be a musician,” Hill says. “He wanted to be a musician, but he was a puddle, so he couldn’t sing.”

Hill mumbles something unintelligible to illustrate what a singing puddle might sound like.

“It’s a really weird idea,” he admits. “I decided it’s just too crazy to do.”

I share this part of my recent conversation with Hill only to illustrate how many honest and original ideas flow through this prolific guy’s mind. Interestingly, to meet him and experience his “aw, shucks,” shrug-and-a-smile demeanor, you’d expect him to be the guy who hangs out at the library on weekends and really likes to play chess, not someone imagining wild concepts and creating complex musical compositions.

In fact, while he and his Photons can indeed rock a bit, it is actually ambient, soundtrack composition that really inspires Hill. And it was a long process arriving where he is now. He started out at a very young age interested in writing before shifting into visual arts. This got him into DuPont Manual High School.

“There’s a bunch of nerds at Manual, so I fit right in,” he says. But visual arts weren’t his ultimate calling – specifically the idea of studying visual arts.

“I learned the basics,” he says. “But you know what? You can’t learn art, man. It’s ridiculous to think someone can teach you art. People come up and say ‘How do you start something like this?’ I say, ‘I don’t know.’ My recommendation is just to do things – do something, then move on. Then do something else.”

But music validated him. He admits being “enthralled with melodies,” but says performing and the instant feedback it provides was the real hook.

“I can’t think of a time when I was like, ‘I’m going to do music now,’” he says. “Back [when he first started], I was just playing piano. I would play something for people and they would like really enjoy it, and that was cool for me. I got more positive feedback from playing music than anything else I did. That kind of led me in that direction.”

His interest in music was piqued listening to soundtracks and ambient stuff. As a young boy he memorized the “Star Wars” soundtrack note for note and would hum it relentlessly.

That focus on the non-traditional may have crept into the latest batch of Phourist recordings. “The Wave” is a downloadable single that was originally part of an EP, but the other songs sounded so different he decided the continuity wasn’t there to release it together.

“It was like an epic piano and drum thing,” Hill says. “It sounded like I was trying to be like Nirvana on the piano or something.”

As for the curious band name, Hill says the idea started with his mom. Hill’s middle name is Forrest, and he knew if he used that, the film “Forrest Gump” would eat him alive on Google. So he combined Forrest with “phosphorescence” (in addition to music and weird underwater journeys, Hill also has a thing for light bulbs) and got Phourist.

Hill has a Phourist and the Photons album written and ready to be recorded; he just needs some financing and the right studio. He says he is talking with representation that could help get Phourist music into film and video, but that discussions are just beginning. In the meantime, he continues to hone his band’s sound and perform relentlessly. Oh, and come up with plenty of wild new ideas.

A couple of weeks after my interview with Hill, he sent me a message in response to my asking him how he would describe the sound of his music. He wrote (in part): “I had landed on a descriptive term for the next record – that it was probably gonna sound ‘like bone marrow exploding.’ Like, liquid-y with textural rhythms. … [But] I’m not sure it’s gonna sound like that anymore.”

How would one film a bone marrow explosion? Hill is probably the only guy who might be able to figure that one out. Don’t be surprised if it happens. - Insider Louisville

This young composer is a genius. The New Age artist of the 21st century. - Gavin Caster

Of the highest originality and 'spooking' vitality/verve. - Vernon Lynn Stephens

Provides you with a different experience than your traditional musical endeavor. Like an exploration of an unfamiliar terrain. - Ryan Pierson

I can see a concert venue with thousands of people holding up their smart phones with the fake lighter app singing along to every word. - Charlie Harrelson