A pastiche of post-rock, chamber-pop and contemporary classical composition, San Fermin is the work of Brooklyn composer and songwriter Ellis Ludwig-Leone. His self-titled debut album is strongly influenced by his unique background in classical music, which includes a job assisting composer/arranger Nico Muhly.
After finishing his musical studies at Yale, Ludwig-Leone wrote the album in six weeks while holed up in a studio on the mountainous border between Alberta and British Columbia. He focused on lifeʼs top-shelf issues – youth, nostalgia, anxiety, unrequited love – and tied these vast themes to different characters through vocal contributions from longtime friend Allen Tate, as well as Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius.
San Fermin is not an album of singles but rather a sweeping, full-bodied listen with multiple distinct peaks and ambitious thematic connections. Ludwig-Leone composed all of the album's arrangements and lyrics in full prior to collaborating and recording, noting that “writing for a large group of unknown musicians infused the writing process with a kind of operatic scope."
The first track released from the album, "Sonsick", tackles many of these larger themes head-on. “I was near the end of a relationship and, not coincidentally, the song contains a direct confrontation between opposing views on the subject," he says. "I realized that the most intense moments are the ones in which conflicting emotional worlds exist inside you, equally, at once."

Son Lux is Ryan Lott. His debut recording, At War With Walls and Mazes (2008), earned him the title of "Best New Artist" by NPR's All Songs Considered. In 2011 he followed up this release with We Are Rising which Consequence of Sound described as "the dark, operatic middle ground between Owen Pallett and In Rainbows-era Radiohead or Wild Beasts' fantastic, operatic heights."

In the last 4 years Lott has built an impressive list of collaborators including everyone from indie-rock darlings such as Sufjan Stevens, Peter Silberman (The Antlers), These New Puritans, My Brightest Diamond; to composers and classical world institutions such as Nico Muhly, Richard Perry (Arcade Fire), Judd Greenstein, yMusic, ETHEL, and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw; to rappers Serengeti, Busdriver and Beans (Antipop Consortium).