Auscultation Returns to 100% Silk with New Album ‘IV’

Joel Shanahan has been a quiet constant in American DIY electronics for well over a decade. Through his Golden Donna project and later as Auscultation, he threaded a path from Not Not Fun’s early-2010s tape ecosystem to 100% Silk, becoming one of the California label’s most reliable voices. In the years since, he left Wisconsin for the Pacific Northwest, kept his Signal Dreams imprint breathing, and never really stopped playing live. But it has been six years since the last Auscultation LP.

That changes on 5th June. ‘IV’ lands via 100% Silk, an album the label says was “polished and shelved between bursts of inspiration and malaise.” For anyone who has followed Shanahan’s work, the description rings true. His music has always moved in cycles, rarely rushed, shaped more by internal weather than any release calendar. The Pacific Northwest setting feels relevant here. The album carries a muggy, introverted weight, thick with overgrown MIDI funk and synth patterns that knot around themselves before opening outward.

The closing track, “Precarious,” pulls the record toward something slower and more ruminative. It builds from a guitar sample dragged to a syrupy crawl, a low bass line sliding beneath it, and percussion that stays crisp but never pushes forward. Synths rise gently through the final minutes, not quite breaking through the grey but letting in a sliver of light. It’s a careful ending to an album that refuses easy release, letting its densest moments dissolve rather than resolve.

‘IV’ is out 5th June via 100% Silk. Pre-orders are up on Bandcamp now.