Moss Of Aura

Gerrit Welmers, who serves as keyboardist and programmer in the Baltimore synth pop outfit Future Islands, issues solo instrumental recordings under the Moss of Aura name. Those pieces combine luminous, buoyant melodies tinged with understated melancholy and dense, mid-paced rhythms. He launched the Moss of Aura project in 2005 while based in Greenville, North Carolina, the same period when Future Islands first formed, although Welmers, guitarist William Cashion, and singer Samuel T. Herring had already collaborated in Art Lord & the Self-Portraits. Moss of Aura issued several limited CD-Rs and cassettes, among them a split with Future Islands that counted as one of the band’s earliest releases. The initial solo material leaned rough, glitchy, and experimental, yet the project gradually adopted a more streamlined and approachable approach, much like his work with Future Islands. Its vinyl introduction arrived in 2011 with the full-length Wading, an album that aligned with the prevailing chillwave sound. Moss of Aura remained intermittently active, though the endeavor paused when Future Islands joined 4AD and delivered the widely successful Singles in 2014. The project resurfaced in 2016 with the full-length We’ll All Collide, which placed greater emphasis on guitars than earlier efforts.