06/24/2025

M. Sage Announces New Album Tender / Wading

M. Sage shares the first transmission from his new album, Tender / Wading. Returning to write and record in a patch of homeland in the foothills and pastures of Colorado, Matt channels the reassurance of coming home into a sweeping, serene vision.

The follow up to his 2023 RVNG debut Paradise Crick, Tender / Wading marks a decisive, distinct evolution of his solo output. Matt’s involvement with groups like Fuubutsushi / his return to life nature alongside his family after ten years in Chicago coalesce as new creative stimuli, shifting his sound to a pastoral kind of folk kosmiche and contemplative electro-acoustic barn jazz for the front range, brimming with pale puddle blues and rusted oil drum reds.

Embracing the elemental and intentional, while finding a new comfort in writing on the piano, there is a sense of structural heft within these songs. Where Crick’s universe was born from magical realism and digital fantasy, Tender / Wading cuts from the human experience more directly, marking Matt’s most autobiographical work yet. Yet, he is quick, push back on notions of it being a highly conceptual record; “I’m just making the music that I would want to be playing in my headphones while weeding or whatever.”

Today we share “Tender of Land,” the closing track of Tender / Wading, and a prime slice of the holistic, radical softness that colors the record. The accompanying video, directed and edited by Matt, likewise offers a glimpse into the sensorial topography that inspired it.

Tender / Wading is available now for pre-order on digital, standard black LP, Japanese import CD with obi and exclusive bonus tracks (via Plancha), as well as in a limited artist edition run of 100 black LPs with alternate designs and screen printed covers, direct from the RVNG webstore.