Local Spotlight | “Chamomile (Smoke Rings)” by Lazuli Vane

Neptune Beach has treated Patrick Taylor well. Since arriving in the small ocean-adjacent enclave a year ago, the songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who performs under Lazuli Vane has been productive, releasing the texturally rich and experimentally inclined full-length, 2020’s ambient The Orphic Rite of the Cult of Sedna.

More importantly, perhaps, for the young creative, he’s embedded himself within an emotionally supportive group of peers and collaborators that he says has provided both solace and inspiration. 

“Since moving to Neptune Beach last year I’ve been loved so well by so many people,” Taylor told us via email. “I landed here after several years of difficulty and depression. And this year here has taught me to open up and love, and shown me that there’s still so much good life to live.” 

The tripped out “Chamomile (Smoke Rings),” Taylor’s newest single as Lazuli Vane, certainly seems to find the artist in a good mood. “Chamomile brings rest / you know the truth stings best / you couldn’t grow wings / just blowing smoke rings,” Taylor sings on one of the song’s many playfully cryptic lines, before offering what may be the artist’s new mantra: “sweet enough, looking up, giving love, getting love, building trust.” 

Buoyed by a booming, vintage-Moog-like bass tone, pleasant piano twinkles and colorful atmospherics, Taylor steeps a funk-laced psychedelic brew on “Chamomile.” Aside from Christian Pittman’s drums (and a fleeting trombone pull by Corey Kilgannon), Taylor plays all the instruments on “Chamomile,” including a fretless bass, on which Taylor made use of an envelope filter to deploy the song’s singular tone. 

“I wanted this song to come out funky and trippy and even a bit freaky so as not to lose or deny the sense that life’s darkness still infringes on every side, only now with humor and some levity,” Taylor says of the track, offering that ultimately “I hope the tune makes folks dance!”

Check out the video for “Chamomile (Smoke Rings)” above and listen via your preferred streaming platform below.