Steven Lambke and Jimmie Kilpatrick - Friendship Traces
You’ve Changed Records
Released on June 6th, 2025
One time, a bar I worked at did a $4.25 vodka with blue Powerade drink special.Some guy came up and ordered one, took a sip and said “ah, it isn’t very good.” and I was like “brother, I don’t know how you thought it would taste any different.”
When I heard that Shotgun Jimmie and Steven Lambke were releasing a record together, I knew exactly what I was getting. I’ve heard every song that either of these people have ever released. I know their voices intimately and I was so excited for those voices to blend. Then something happened. This wasn’t vodka dropped into delicious blue Powerade. This was melon wrapped in prosciutto. This was two amazing things that combined into an all new, unexpected thing. How do the voices blend? Really well, you’d assume. Wrong, dummy. There are no voices! It’s just a whole new thing.
Here is how it happened: Jimmie Kilpatrick (Shotgun Jimmie, Shotgun & Jaybird) got a drum machine/sampler and used it with tape manipulation techniques like the ones pioneered by Schaeffer, Reich, Riley and later Eno and the to change acoustic percussive sounds and smash then, slow them, stretch them, utterly dismantle them. He would then rebuild the sound into something new and build a song skeleton built upon a single source sound. Jim birthed the beats Then he sent them to Steve to be raised.
Steven Lambke (Baby Eagle, The Constantines) used only a bass and a Suzuki Melodian. In his words, “The bass as grounding, the melodion as air, air in a small room in front of a microphone, all the clicks and clacks of plastic and my breathing.”
By limiting themselves by both instrumentation and composition rules, they had set themselves up for a Dogme 95 style experience and it culminated in a piece of art as beautiful and wondrous as Italian for Beginners or The Celebration.
Friendship Traces is a record that was almost impossible to review because I kept getting lost in it. Each song is a sparse instrumental that allowed me to savor every sound. The sounds entered my mouth and let me swish it around, each touched my skin and covered me in goosebumps, the bouquet of each song entered my nose. Each sound hit my eyes like little bursts of light and eventually reformed and hit my ears. There are no moments where anything feels same-y or redundant. Each track is a unique thing that pushed and pulled at me. I felt like I was floating in the ocean, with my ears below the surface. The album feels natural, soothing and vital.
The tracks build, but never quite to a crescendo. They inflate and deflate like lungs. The lull sometimes. They lay down and take a load off, then stand up and do their exercises. Each song looks you in the eye, speaks a little, then stops, puffing a cigarette, squinting at the sun and tries to recall what they were saying.
I don’t know if any of that makes sense. This album feels human and vulnerable. It is bleepy and bloopy. It sounds like a record made by two people who really like each other. Two people who are setting the other up for success.
The album cover seems to be a game of pickup sticks. That works perfectly. Friendship Traces is a bit innocent and a youthful, but also complex, chaotic and beautiful. So it’s not like vodka and blue powerade. It’s just a whole other thing and it’s as incredible as any work that either of them have ever made.
