Rick Pedrosa has long been a quiet but influential presence in Portland’s music scene, lending his pedal steel to groups and artists such as Abronia, Federale, Jeffrey Silverstein, and occasionally the Rose City Band.
With The Far Sound, his solo project, Pedrosa steps out from the background and into a widescreen landscape of his own making.
We last checked in with Pedrosa with The Far Sound’s self-titled debut in 2023, which was one of my favorite records of that year. As we wrote about the record back then:
“When we say music sounds ‘cinematic,’ a record like The Far Sound is what we mean. It sounds like something that could be the soundtrack for an abstract Western film – maybe The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.”
Pedrosa’s second full-length, To Heart, To Earth (out November 2nd via Centripetal Force), also plays like a sequence of cinematic vignettes. But I would say that on this new record, Pedrosa has expanded the sound and taken it in exciting new directions.
His music carries a sepia-toned quality, as if drawn from old reels of film. The songs move with the slow patience of rural highways at dusk, or the stillness before a storm. You can see the images Pedrosa conjures with his exotic ambient country: distant horizons, fields stretched wide, a slant of sunlight across wood grain.
That imagery is no accident. His core palette of pedal steel, acoustic guitar, and banjo has now expanded to include harmonica, violin, and live drums courtesy of John Jeffrey (Moon Duo, Rose City Band). The additions widen the lens, giving To Heart, To Earth a looser, more exploratory character without losing its meditative glow.
The record’s narrative flow is part intention, part accident. Some tracks began as fragmentary sketches. Others, like the improvisational jam with Jeffrey (“Reach Back and Grab Something”), arrived spontaneously, slotting into place as if they had always been part of the arc.
Across the album, Pedrosa balances structure and openness, composition and drift, until the whole thing feels like a long, exhaling breath.
The looseness of “Reach Back and Grab Something” makes perfect sense. It was born from an off-the-cuff jam with Jeffrey. Yet it stands out as one of the album’s highlights, thanks to the fearless way Pedrosa pushes his pedal steel into uncharted terrain. Where much of the record feels like surveying the horizon from a distance, this track feels like galloping straight across it, wild, untamed, and alive with momentum.
The influences that hover over these pieces are varied but convergent: the ghostly Americana of Bill Frisell, the devotionals of Pharoah Sanders, the atmospheric mysticism of Popol Vuh, and the improvisational sprawl of the Dead’s mid-’70s jams.
You may hear traces of Neil Young’s ragged Year of the Horse, the pastoral guitar meditations of Rick Deitrick, and above all, the melodic storytelling of Morricone and Nicolai, whose shadow stretches across Pedrosa’s cinematic sensibility.
Pedrosa calls this record “a bridge,” an album that gathers his past and gestures toward his future. That sense of passage is embedded in the music itself, which moves like a traveler across shifting terrain.
“The title, To Heart, To Earth, can mean a lot of things,” Pedrosa says. “It’s open. Just like the music. The more I played and arranged, the more I wanted it to feel like a letter — a message from this place to somewhere else, or maybe someone else.”
It’s rare for an instrumental album to speak so clearly, but Pedrosa’s unique voice is in every note. To Heart, To Earth doesn’t merely soundtrack imagined landscapes, though it does that quite well, too. It builds a landscape all of its own accord, invites you in, and leaves you wandering amid its sounds and images.
Add this record to the long line of other stellar ambient country and pedal steel western classics, especially coming from Centripetal Force.
If you’re so inclined, pair it with a listen to the record that started it all: The Hired Hand by Bruce Langhorne.
Pre-order To Heart, To Earth by The Far Sound on Bandcamp here
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