Outer Face

On Outer Face, Matthew E. White takes the elements of his 2012 debut album, Big Inner, and strips them down to the basics. This is an EP full of tender percussion and lush strings, occasionally sparse but always entirely fulfilling.

For this new EP, Matthew E. White set specific guidelines: Guitars stayed propped on their stands, horns were barred, and the piano remained shut. Outer Face is enlivened by this playful experimentalism, as though the Richmond, Va., musician is breaking his sound down to its barest elements.