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OFF THE AIR Presents: Sylvan Improvement | LoPi | Completions

We’re closing Summer by bringing Off The Air back!

After a couple long months of humming air conditioners, we’re launching a whole new season of OFF THE AIR shows in new places with music so good, it’ll buoy us a little higher than oughta be allowed!

On August 29th, three bands bring stories that don’t hype for attention—they just unfold. A back patio venue, a cheap beer, and the kind of music that knows how to leave space.

Sylvan Improvement—After Neil Jackson’s renowned California indie-rock project, Built Like Alaska, came to an end, and armed with a handful of unused songs, he embarked on a new music endeavor: Sylvan Improvement. Old friends, Taylor Webster (Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit), Chris Doud (Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit), and Aaron Burtch (Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit, Grandaddy) joined in to flesh out the songs. In between the rumblings of trains and loads of laundry, surrounded by animal heads and windchimes, the quartet has just finished recording their debut album, which is set to be released in 2025. Bringing a rural perspective to sturdy rock songs, the music has been said to conjure images both "warm and rich as the central valley sun” and as isolated as a “mic stand draped in cobwebs."

LoPi—LoPi is the songwriting project of Oakland-based multi-instrumentalist Alex Miner. Their 2024 album Now Is Truer Music unfolds in fragmented vignettes—short, vulnerable sketches that shift between experimental folk, bedroom pop, and ambient textures. Built in collaboration with rotating players on saxophone, drums, piano, and guitar, the album captures a deep intimacy: quiet chaos, soft edges, and flickers of warmth in the static. LoPi’s songs, they feel their way forward, and your brain will know exactly how to track.

Completions— Shawn Alpay named his project Completions as an internal reminder to finish things.

Alpay has served as a cellist with many projects, including Laura Stevenson, Father John Misty, Whitney, and How To Dress Well. He also worked extensively as an engineer at analog studio Tiny Telephone. But all this meant that his own creations remained deprioritized and half-done.

The name of Alpay’s debut LP, released Sept 23, 2022, is also a reminder: I Needed Help. The last couple of years presented him a great, if grim, opportunity to reckon with a lifetime of depending only on himself. Therapy, current events, marriage, and a serious back surgery laid the creative foundation for a batch of songs that circle around a singular theme: how can we let other people in, especially when we don't want to?

With that in mind, Alpay fleshed out the album arrangements by leaning on his friends, including Dave Depper (Death Cab for Cutie), Kelly Pratt (Father John Misty, Beirut), and Laura Stevenson.