Blue Lake is the musical project of American multidisciplinary artist and musician Jason Dungan. Born in Dallas, T exas, he now resides in Copenhagen on an island, unbeknown to most, named Amager, in the heart of the Danish capital. His 2023 album ‘Sun Arcs’ (Tonal Union) received international critical acclaim. Praised for being a unique sound offering with an inventive free spirit, amongst other accolades, Pitchfork named it ‘Best New Music, 8.3’ and an ‘Album of the Year’. This followed formative releases ‘Stikling’ (2022, Polychrome), earning a nomination for ‘Album of the Y ear’ at the Danish Music Awards, ‘The Parrot’ (2019, Kiosk 7) and‘Moving’ (2020, Polychrome).
After having met his long term partner, it was through spending summers in the idyllic Swedish countryside that Dungan had begun to develop the Blue Lake project, working with acoustic instruments and found elements for percussion, and instruments like the pump organ that are quite common in Scandinavia. ‘Sun Arcs’ began in a cabin known as Andersabo, also a music project, festival and residency space which has been run by Dungan since 2016, hosting artists like Sofie Birch, Johan Carøe and Ellen Arkbro. It was here that in previous years he had formed Squares and T riangles, an experimental music group consisting of visuals artists who were all, like Dungan, based in London at the time.
It was in this open, natural setting, where Dungan would spend time playing, recording, walking in the woods and swimming in his local lake, that he also became interested in revisiting the sounds of his upbringing in the American south (Laurel Canyon Folk, Americana, Country and Tejano music). As a child he would spend time in the mountains in places like New Mexico and southern Colorado, in beautiful but empty spaces where he had a sense of himself as small in relation to his surroundings, and where, as in Andersabo, he would be very conscious of the changing weather and light. Such spaces and rhythms would become important in defining his creative headspace.
He had also simultaneously become involved with the Copenhagen scene, the diversity of which, along with his experiences in Andersabo, inspired in him a total musical reinvention. Having relocated to Copenhagen, Dungan found himself listening with fresh ears to American artists who were making communally-oriented, direct music that drew from folk and jazz, with an open melodic sensibility: Mary Lattimore, Steve Gunn, Jeff Parker. A self-taught player, Dungan began freely experimenting with self-built, multi-string instruments, such as his hybrid 48-string zither, which was based on the European zither but with added elements of the banjo and harp in its sound and playing style. This instrument would allow him to create dense, overlapping patterns and drones, facilitating him to develop his own style of acoustic minimalism.
Whilst on ‘Sun Arcs’, Dungan had layered most of the instruments himself, having toured the album extensively, often with a band, his mind opened to the dynamics of live performance and to focusing on the song-like element of the music. With a number of the tracks having been entirely recorded live with members of his touring band, on his forthcoming mini-album ‘Weft’ (2025, Tonal Union), the elements have aligned to create the most explicit version yet of a T exan creating his own modernist, Nordic inspired blend of Americana.
Today, Dungan believes in the emotional potential of instrumental music. He thinks of his current music as songs, written initially on guitar, whilst treating instruments such as the clarinet, the zither or the slide guitar as voices, repositioning their sounds into an entirely fresh musical landscape. Mirroring the spaces of nature in which his project was conceived, his goal is to create an openness through which the listener can connect their own emotional relationship to each song.
In 2024, Blue Lake performed live across a swath of European cities and festivals, culminating in an appearance at the much loved End Of The Road festival (UK). Dungan was also invited to support the Japanese singer-songwriter Ichiko Aoba at her sold out London concert, which followed his own sold out London performances in 2023.
Selected reviews
“The recordings on Sun Arcs conjure a similarly intimate view, one that can feel both magical in its simplicity and all the more compelling for what’s just out of frame.”
— Pitchfork, Best New Music, The 50 Best Albums of 2023
“A dense, emotional and far-spanning revelation”.
— Paste Magazine, The 50 Best Albums of 2023
“Delicate introspection from the Swedish woods”
– Uncut
“A shimmering, drifting quality, like dappled sun on water.“
– The Quietus
Ezra Feinberg is an American composer-guitarist, a practising psychoanalyst and former founding member of the San Francisco-based collective Citay. The highly acclaimed third album ‘Soft Power’ (2024) saw Feinberg enlist an impressive array of fellow musicians including Mary Lattimore, David Moore (Bing & Ruth), Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Robbie Lee and more. Defined by its abundance of melodies, repeating figures and ecstatic improvisations, Soft Power exudes an enlightened and transformative spirit to empower the listener. Recorded in New York by regular collaborator and engineer John Thayer, it follows previous albums ‘Recumbent Speech’ (2020) and ‘Pentimento and Others’ (2018). Feinberg was also a key contributor on the Arp album ‘Zebra’ in 2018.
Feinberg currently resides in New York’s Hudson River valley.
When not holed up in the studio working on records (the War on Drugs /Nothing/Kurt Vile etc) Jeff Zeigler can be found making music in experimental duos with synthesist Dash Lewis, Harpist Mary Lattimore or multi-instrumentalist Sarah Schimeneck (as Inlets) or solo under his own name. Taking a semi-improvised, dubbed-out approach to minimal electronic music, live sets weave between soft-focus songs, a la John Bender/Arthur Russell/Suicide and open-ended pulsing Krautscapes ala Cluster. He’s currently finishing a solo LP for 2026 focusing heavily on modular synthesizers utilized in a song-based context.
