Matt Radick is best known for his work with Holopaw, but today, we meet a new side of the musician, as he becomes the lost-soul vagabond songwriter Ann Pragg. Where to draw the line between alter ego and multiple personality isn't exactly clear, but a noticeable change in sound and nature certainly occurs when Radick goes it alone.

While Holopaw comes across as humble and happy -- not hopeful, exactly, but satisfied -- Ann Pragg's music is somber and bleak. Even so, 'Demolition Dust,' today's free MP3, retains a stark beauty. As the words "burned from the glow of one hundred suns" drift from the speakers, almost lost in their own reverb, it's as if the song were inspired by a hole in Pragg's heart.

"Thematically, 'Demo Dust' always had a kind of post-apocalyptic feel to it," Radick said. "You know, roaming aimlessly through wasteland wreckage after everything's been blown up and scattered. This incarnation of it's recording came about somewhat serendipitously. I always played it in an awkward tuning with a lot of ornate and sometimes convoluted finger-picking. But, something about it wasn't working when we tried to lay it down and we were about to give up on it. Luckily, through collaboration with Boyd from Wonderland, we ended up applying simpler, more sprawling open chords to it to go on top of this kinda crusty and raw drum loop. We ended up with this version which I really like and which seems truer to it's theme: sparse and searching, wandering through the desert."

'Bitter Fruit' will be available from Wonderland Archives May 7th.
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