Premiere: AM & Shawn Lee, ‘Dark Into Light’

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It was a match made in cyberspace: L.A.-based singer-songwriter AM, whose 2010 album “Future Sons & Daughters” mixed and matched soul, psych-pop and folk, and American-born, London-based composer/producer Shawn Lee, known for his soundtrack work and out-there releases on Ubiquity Records. The new collaboration – which still hasn’t been named – has spawned an album’s worth of material that darts in and out of the pop/soul/tropicalia netherworlds, with the debut track “Dark Into Light” twinkling like a star on AM’s soaring falsetto. The project started after AM was smitten upon hearing “Music and Rhythm,” the 2004 album by Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra. He contacted Lee, with the transatlantic pair eventually trading tracks. From the Postal Service to Broken Bells, songwriter/producer pop collaborations have yielded some pretty special material; this could be the next one.

||| Download: “Dark Into Light”

||| Live: AM & Shawn Lee debut their material live on March 7 at the Hotel Cafe.