Staccato Drone takes listeners on an immersive journey with ‘Beaches of Mars’

Peter Shumaker said the songs he writes for Staccato Drone tend to come together slowly, often emerging over a period of months or even years. Sonically, the tracks populating the band’s new album, Beaches of Mars (Head2Wall), reflect this approach, often hitting as though they’ve taken shape through a process of gestation rather than typical recording means, with Shumaker crafting an enveloping, deeply textured sound garden in which listeners can fully immerse themselves. 

This time invested is essential to the music, according to Shumaker, who described the first two weeks spent on any song as an audition period during which he’ll sit with a track, poke at its edges, and see what aspects of it, if any, might embed in his brain. 

“And if I get past those first couple weeks, where it’s like, hey, this is going somewhere, then I’ll keep working on it. And if not, I’ll immediately jettison it,” said Shumaker, who will celebrate the release of Beaches of Mars in concert at Rambling House on Friday, Sept. 5, joined by opener Dom Deshawn, who also makes a guest appearance on the album track “Don’t Say It’s Over.” “I’m just very slow, and I like to take my time.”

Lead-off cut “Sacred Chorus,” for instance, originated more than four years back, first surfacing as Shumaker composed the songs that would become Staccato Drone’s self-titled EP, from 2023. At the time, Shumaker believed he didn’t have the skills needed to capture the sounds he heard in his head, so he shelved the tune, aware something about it just wasn’t clicking. “For a long time, I had it in one form, and it had a very specific chorus,” he said. “And then one day I was in the shower … and a whole new chorus came to me out of nowhere. And that was the moment. That’s when it was like, oh, this is a new part that was not here before. And it made the whole song work for me.”

Shumaker described the element of surprise as intrinsic to his process, his music often hinging on a moment where something happens – either intentionally or by accident – that pulls the track in an unanticipated direction. “Maybe I’ll shift part of the [sound] file on accident, but it sounds good there, or a new part will come into my head that really makes it work in a way I wasn’t expecting,” he said. “I love when a song transforms from what I initially thought it was into something new.”

A similar transformative arc takes shape over the course of Beaches of Mars, a lushly orchestrated record that begins deep in the folds of new romance (“Can this love span the life that’s before us?” Shumaker sings on the dreamy, heart swelling “Sacred Chorus”) and then gradually corrodes. As the album nears its end, Shumaker delivers a pair of tracks that appear to serve as a denouement to the relationship contained within: The saxophone-led instrumental “Or Is It Just Limerence,” which conjures dreary nighttime vibes, and “We Were Together,” a wistful look back pointedly titled in the past tense. 

Additional finality arrives in the form of the album-closing “I Must Be Dreaming,” which Shumaker said was written toward the end of a relationship he knew wasn’t going to work, but which also captures a sense of better days to come. “It kind of walks [listeners] through that experience, and then at the end, it’s talking about how I found someone new, and I hope you’re well,” said Shumaker, who met the woman who would become his wife as that relationship ended. “So, if you repeat the album … it’s like everything does tie back to itself, and the story continues.”

That Shumaker would adopt a cinematic throughline in his album shouldn’t surprise, considering he often crafts his music with specific visual scenes projecting in his mind. In creating “Is This Just Limerence,” for instance, he envisioned a broken-hearted person looking out the window through a downpour, their thoughts focused on the various missteps and misdeeds that led them to this lonely place. “Sacred Chorus,” in contrast, transported the musician to the comparatively cozy confines of his marital bedroom, which at night is bathed in comforting neon pink light, the track having originated as a more straightforward love song dedicated to his wife. “So, that was the place I was in mentally even when I was writing it,” he said.

Growing up in Clintonville, Shumaker initially gravitated toward visual art, developing an interest in music as he tired of the seclusion that tended to go hand-in-hand with the practice. “Even though I’m kind of a daydreamer, I like being around people,” said Shumaker, who has since hit upon a connection existing between the artistic forms. “As I started to focus on music more, I started to realize there was a visual aspect to it, as well. It was like I could see it, and the music could almost take me somewhere.”