Chris Walla has said little publicly about his 2014 departure from Death Cab for Cutie, a band that he co-founded and called home for 17 years. He begins to break his silence with Tape Loops, a full-length album that doesn’t so much provide answers or explanations, but invites the listener into the instrumental landscapes of his inner world.Sidestepping the specificity of narrative songwriting in favor of immersive aural topographies, Chris Walla’s Tape Loops offers up a quietly dynamic listen that is as beautiful as it is masterful. Leaning into the constraints of analog loop-based recording, Walla’s virtuosity as a composer and producer shines. The album’s richly layered arrangements reveal their powerful “I can't change a closed, physical tape loop with a mouse-click or a keystroke, and that’s precisely the point,” Walla explains. “Digital recording and editing often feels like working in a spreadsheet—it's not always a place for dreams.”Chris Walla is a writer, musician and record producer. Tape Loops is his first solo album since Field Manual (2008). A founding member of Death Cab for Cutie, he was the guitarist, producer and co-writer from 1997 to 2014.