The debut album from Pneumatic Tubes, the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Jesse Chandler ( keyboard & woodwinds player for the bands Midlake and Mercury Rev). Grounded here in his own bucolic makings, Chandler opens his imagination to the world with this very personal and contemplative album. It’s a kind of American Kosmiche Music, a paean to the wild landscapes of the Adirondacks and Catskills of Upstate New York where he grew up. (TreeTops is the name of a summer camp, fondly remembered by several generations of the Chandler family.)

The album came to Chandler almost as an automatic transmission. Shortly after the death of his father, he holed up alone in the old family home with a few synths, a couple of vintage keyboards, percussion instruments and of course his beloved flutes and clarinets – the “pneumatic tubes” of his nom de plume. Channelling raw memory and landscape, Chandler laid down most of the material for this mystical and elegiac suite of music in just a few days. He later called on some talented friends to flesh out the final recordings; Paul Alexander on bass, Bill Campbell on drums, Marissa Nadler backing vocals and Robert Gomez on electric guitar. The result is a series of beautifully faded musical photographs.

Reviews

"A Letter From TreeTops’ is a beguilingly languid and intoxicating listen...
Absolutely gorgeous."
Electronic Sound

"Chandler uses keyboards and woodwind to full nostalgic effect, every tone hinting at some keenly felt absence... There is also a lovely sense of drama in the way the tracks have been sequenced, each one contrasting with or extending the mood of what came before. This letter changes mood with every paragraph. Packaged and presented with the dreamy thoroughness that has become a Ghost Box hallmark, A Letter From TreeTops is worth reading and rereading"
Wire

"It's a collection of sonic Polaroids with soothing powers, so entirely and genuinely personal it ends up speaking to (and of) universal feelings. Musically, the album offers plenty of wide-eyed library-imbued warmth and hauntological escapism... A quiet triumph."
Shindig

"...sits somewhere between the rural kosmische of Cluster and the electro nostalgia of Boards Of Canada. Yet while much of this music has a sun-dappled, magic hour feel to it, it's grounded by a hint of melancholy"
Prog Magazine