NorCal Guitarist and Singer-Songwriter Piet Dalmolen Unveils Debut Solo LP Time Stands Still

From the coastal cliffs of Northern California’s Emerald Triangle, guitarist/singer/songwriter PIET DALMOLEN proudly unveils TIME STANDS STILL, his long-awaited debut solo LP available January 17, 2025. Boasting eight eclectic compositions, this talisman resonates through an ambitious amalgam of sublime psychedelic rock, soulful jazzy blues, and indie-Americana. Bobbing and weaving amidst the foundational chemistry of bass, drums, and various keyboards, Piet’s superb guitar and understated vocals coalesce to create a dense, potent vessel of joy and vulnerability.

A veteran studio engineer and session guitarist for two decades, Dalmolen toured nationally in the mid-aughts with jam upstarts Nucleus, and subsequently gigged with numerous Northern California bands. These days he’s in DIY-mode across multiple roles for this intensely personal passion project. Ably assisted by Matt Engel on keyboards, Tommy Fitzmaurice on drums, and Ian Taylor on bass, TIME STANDS STILL was tracked across several sessions in 2023 at Odyssey Studios, a rustic barn situated on a prairie overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Here Piet Dalmolen was able to keep his focus solely on creativity and bandleading, and once the basic tracks were laid down, he overdubbed additional guitar and vocals at his own Universal Balance Studios in Arcata, CA, throughout 2024.

Taking in stride some big personal life changes after the disruption of the pandemic, and as an enthusiastic new surfer, PIET DALMOLEN took a much-needed vacation to Maui in the summer of 2023. It was an influential trip for Piet that resulted in most of the music heard on TIME STANDS STILL. This intentional collection reveals a reluctant poet reawakened, mining inspiration from life’s trials and tribulations, and discovering knowledge of self amid the glorious environs of sacred Hawaiian Islands. Piet was staying in Lahaina when the dry hurricane winds swept the now infamous fires down from the mountain into town, and he fled on foot with guitar on his back, eventually hitchhiking to the airport.

PIET DALMOLEN had spent the previous 15 years gigging with other bands and playing covers, and while grateful to be playing regularly, it was a long dry spell from creating his own music. Feeling inspired to dive back in and with a wealth of new material, he picked his local dream team of musicians and watched it all fall into place.

“I love my band for their talent, aesthetic, and easy-going personalities,” says Piet. “The older I get the more I appreciate having the right people that I can rely on and have fun with, and thankfully they believe in my musical vision.”

TIME STANDS STILL was written, produced, mixed, and mastered all by PIET DALMOLEN. On this solo opening salvo, PIET DALMOLEN monologues abstract musings, illustrated with ruminations on love, loss, fatherhood, mortality, and new beginnings. Sturdy songcraft couched in a bare-bones analog aesthetic, the gritty grooves get drizzled with earthy textures and tasty guitar tones, whispering sweet melodies that make the eyes well up and chest weigh heavy. Music manifested in the wake of seismic change, waves of grief and personal evolution, TIME STANDS STILLtraverses a wide swath of emotional and sonic topography: Floydian dreamscapes, prog-scented improv, sizzling surf-rock, while touching a plethora of points between.

The track “Being” serves as a lyrical centerpiece. Piet wrote the first chorus on his hotel balcony anticipating the arrival of the Maui storm, and the second chorus on the plane ride home. “The pretty guitar coda is something that just came out of me the morning of the fires,” says Piet, “before we had any idea what was to come. And the wave sounds are my own field recording from the trip, not stock. It feels poetic to have them timelessly etched into a record that means so much to me.”