- 1Down By The Lake
- 2Lost And Losing It
- 3Set Adrift
- 4The Lamest American Hero
- 5Doing Well
- 6Floating Back
THE-LAKE001
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Open edition
Listening to “The Lake,” the latest album from Milwaukee’s Maximilian and The Reinhardt, I was left at first with a feeling of uneasy triumph. Wailing guitars crescendo, bass lines build, strings flourish. But on repeated spins, something unsettling started to creep in, a rhythm of anxiety that touches down in the song “Lost And Losing It” and culminates in the bizarre, eerily threatening voicemail that starts off “Doing Well.” As I listened while I walked around or drove or sat in my house, I kept thinking about a line of poetry by Charles Baudelaire:
“The monotonous and tiny world, today
Yesterday, tomorrow, always, shows us our reflections,
An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.”
Maybe that’s because of the album’s origins, forged in the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the world falling apart and human connection distant, Kevin Hill began writing what would eventually become “The Lake.” Cooped up in his house in Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood, the lifelong musician had plenty of time to ruminate on the fresh horrors the virus had wrought, not to mention the political and social upheavals ripping through the country. The mental sirens were broken up only by daily walks along Lake Michigan that became one of Kevin’s few salves against flareups of anxiety and depression.
While those walks brought Kevin into fleeting “contact” with others on the trail, the lake itself began to stand in for something bigger, something dark and depressing and overwhelming. Enter the six tracks of “The Lake,” some of which was recorded that first pandemic year, the rest in 2023 inspired by a “song-a-month” project, 'Beams.'
The album’s foundation is found in Kevin’s love for late-Era Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead and more experimental greats like Harold Budd and Bill Frisell, but the vision and execution is uniquely his. Its production comes after a series of life transitions that, along with the clench and unclenching of the pandemic, have ushered in a period of artistic freedom and experimentation. That includes moving with his partner and their cats to Milwaukee from Washington, D.C., where they've embraced the good life on the Midwest's receptive shores. All the while, Kevin has continued to host and produce the podcast Discologist, where for over a decade he and a rotating group of friends (myself included) have discussed hundreds and hundreds of records while also interviewing some of their favorite musicians.
“The Lake” is both a continuation of that creative energy and something new entirely. Listening again just now, I think I can feel the uneasiness start to ebb, the triumph flow. Or maybe that’s just the sound of the waves on the shore.
- Quinn Myers, Chicago, February 2024
credits
released March 22, 2024
Composed and performed by Kevin Hill
Mixing by Robert Allan Wilson
Mastered by Andrew Wright at Mullet Hill Sound
Cover painting by Patti Hall
Liner notes by Quinn Myers
Special thanks to Daria, Eduardo, Paul, and Drew for their always open ears, big hearts, and endless support of my endeavors.
No amplifiers were used in the creation of this album.
“The monotonous and tiny world, today
Yesterday, tomorrow, always, shows us our reflections,
An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.”
Maybe that’s because of the album’s origins, forged in the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the world falling apart and human connection distant, Kevin Hill began writing what would eventually become “The Lake.” Cooped up in his house in Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood, the lifelong musician had plenty of time to ruminate on the fresh horrors the virus had wrought, not to mention the political and social upheavals ripping through the country. The mental sirens were broken up only by daily walks along Lake Michigan that became one of Kevin’s few salves against flareups of anxiety and depression.
While those walks brought Kevin into fleeting “contact” with others on the trail, the lake itself began to stand in for something bigger, something dark and depressing and overwhelming. Enter the six tracks of “The Lake,” some of which was recorded that first pandemic year, the rest in 2023 inspired by a “song-a-month” project, 'Beams.'
The album’s foundation is found in Kevin’s love for late-Era Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead and more experimental greats like Harold Budd and Bill Frisell, but the vision and execution is uniquely his. Its production comes after a series of life transitions that, along with the clench and unclenching of the pandemic, have ushered in a period of artistic freedom and experimentation. That includes moving with his partner and their cats to Milwaukee from Washington, D.C., where they've embraced the good life on the Midwest's receptive shores. All the while, Kevin has continued to host and produce the podcast Discologist, where for over a decade he and a rotating group of friends (myself included) have discussed hundreds and hundreds of records while also interviewing some of their favorite musicians.
“The Lake” is both a continuation of that creative energy and something new entirely. Listening again just now, I think I can feel the uneasiness start to ebb, the triumph flow. Or maybe that’s just the sound of the waves on the shore.
- Quinn Myers, Chicago, February 2024
credits
released March 22, 2024
Composed and performed by Kevin Hill
Mixing by Robert Allan Wilson
Mastered by Andrew Wright at Mullet Hill Sound
Cover painting by Patti Hall
Liner notes by Quinn Myers
Special thanks to Daria, Eduardo, Paul, and Drew for their always open ears, big hearts, and endless support of my endeavors.
No amplifiers were used in the creation of this album.
