Waking Hours, his second full-length (following 2017’s Onism), is a meditation on time and, more specifically, our obsessive need to fill every moment with activity. “It’s about getting back to a really simple notion of just celebrating your existence and not necessarily attaching this huge story of who you are and what you do,” he says. “It’s about finding comfort in just being.” Photay’s search for calm is at the very core of Waking Hours, and while he admits that making the album was therapeutic, it shouldn’t be mistaken for some sort of healing ambient excursion. The LP is largely electronic, but frequently verges on pop and extensively features Shornstein’s own vocals. The music is intimate and inviting, but it also suggests that Photay is perhaps at his best when he’s blurring genre boundaries. “I really truly love so many different types of music,” he says, “and for this album I opened things up and gave myself the freedom to go anywhere
