Rainshadower will release their new album Charred Scars on November 21st. Rainshadower is the project of multi-instrumentalist A. Ball. Over the years, the multi-artist has been a big part of the Seattle area music scene, playing on numerous albums, shows, and tours in bands, including Cumulus, the Cops, Idiot Pilot, the Saturday Knights, Virgin Islands, Police Teeth, Dryland, and many others. Charred Scars represents Ball’s first foray into releasing music as a solo artist.

Along with the album’s announcement, Rainshadower has shared lead-single, “Cold Comfort of Grey Days”, featuring vocals from Cumulus’ Alexandra Lockhart. Ball describes the lyrics as “an examination of societal collapse as a result of human shortsightedness and climate change.” The song’s bridge steadily increases in intensity as Ball and Lockhart sing the mantra “World is burning, world keeps turning, when will we learn?”

Ball has been an active participant in creating music with the bands he has played in since the 90s, primarily as a drummer. “A lot of that music was written organically with everyone in the room together,” he shares, “and I’ve always felt compelled to throw out ideas and make suggestions on whatever music I’ve been a part of creating collaboratively.” But it was in 2012 that Ball first started seriously writing music on his own when he landed in the hospital with acute appendicitis less than a month after getting home from a tour with Virgin Islands who were supporting Cursive on their I Am Gemini run. “The resulting surgery meant that I couldn’t play drums for several months for the first time in my adult life” he says, “and with the downtime at home, I really dove into figuring out how to demo songs in GarageBand.”

The Rhodes is found on 7 of the 8 tracks on Charred Scars, and is also the instrument Ball primarily writes with when it comes to workshopping new ideas. The name Rainshadower is inspired by the Northwest Washington climate, where rain and overcast skies has been a consistent element and influence for the vast majority of his life. “I love the rain and the beautiful, lush green that it brings,” he shares, “yet I also find it to be oppressive, dreary and miserable at times.” Rainshadower combines two words with negative connotations to create a positive, a guard against and a reprieve from, the sometimes oppressive weather. To Ball, the Rhodes dreamy, beautiful, and melancholic qualities emulate the unique natural beauty of the world he grew up in around Bellingham, WA. A magical place where the trees outnumber people 100 to 1, and the surrounding forests, mountains, and beaches are within easy reach to explore and connect with.

Charred Scars was recorded at The Unknown in Anacrotes, WA, a recording studio nestled inside the upper floor of an early 1900s Catholic church. Ball was introduced to the space while recording an album for the metal/hardcore/stoner band he plays in called Dryland, and decided it would be a great place to track his first Rainshadower album. As a result of the downtime during the pandemic, he’d already been actively whittling down hundreds of voice memos of instrumental song ideas (mostly composed on the Rhodes), arranging, refining and adding layers of other instruments such as vibraphone and slide guitar until he had 10 tracks demoed. “I booked some time at The Unknown, knowing it would force me to get my ducks in a row,” shares Ball. Over the course of the next few months, he tracked the record that would become Charred Scars, and once that work was mostly done, he set about putting lyrics to the instrumental music he’d recorded, developing the words and vocals, often while going for long walks through the forest.

Pre-order Charred Scars HERE