Half Shadow
Half Shadow is the ever-evolving song-writing and performance project of Portland’s Jesse Carsten. Inspired by the intimate, DIY ethos of songwriters like Diane Cluck and Mount Eerie, Carsten began releasing CD-R’s and homemade tapes of his music as Half Shadow in 2013. Incorporating poetry, call and response, question and answer sessions as well as other performative aspects to his shows, Carsten became known as an enigmatic and moving local performer. The Portland Mercury has called Half Shadow’s shows, “invariably powerful, full of wonder, and unlike anything else.”
Despite an elastic performance style Half Shadow’s songs remain humble – a blend of bluesy minimalism and poetic dream storytelling delivered via the framework of experimentally inflected songwriting. Key to Half Shadow’s approach to song is the mythic, the unexpected – creating space for the unconscious aspects of life to appear and transform consciousness. Poetries of the ancient, the mystical, and the transformative abound – listeners are ushered into an elemental world of memory, synchronicities, and visions.
Half Shadow has shared the stage with nationally-recognized indie sweethearts Ava Luna, Porches, Frankie Cosmos, Pool Holograph and Jason Anderson, as well as Pacific Northwest beloveds Black Belt Eagle Scout, The Ghost Ease, Briana Marella, and Mega Bog among others.
2013 saw the release of Half Shadow’s first EP “5 New Songs of Light” by way of Portland’s legendary underground label Eggy Records. Containing several of Carsten’s best-loved songs “Safety” and “Spectral Flower Meditation” the release quickly traveled, finding fans internationally. Half Shadow’s first full length, “Wind, Water, Passion Daughter” was self-released in 2015. A Split Cassette shared with Portland's Cave Cricket was released on Carsten's own Illusion Florist imprint in 2018. Half Shadow's cassette side was also subsequently released digitally as the "Balm" EP. A forthcoming, Self-titled LP is slated for release in 2019.
- Website:
- http://www.halfshadowmusic.com/